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THE  MONEY   GOD 


THE  MONEY  GOD 

CHAPTERS  OF  HERESY  AND  DISSENT  CONCERN- 
ING BUSINESS  METHODS  AND  MERCENARY 
IDEALS  IN  AMERICAN  LIFE 


BY 


JOHN   C.  VAN  DYKE 

\v 

AUTHOR  OP  "THE  DESERT,"  "THE  OPAL  SEA,"  "ART 

FOR  ART'S  SAKE,"  "THE  MEANING 

OP  PICTURES,"  ETC. 


COPYRIGHT,  1908,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Published  April.  1908 


PREFACE 

I  HAVE  waited  twenty  years  for  some  professor  of 
economics  or  properly  equipped  student  of  sociology 
to  write  this  book.  Unhappily  for  my  hope  the  econ- 
omist seems  always  engaged  in  figuring  out  how  man- 
kind can  get  more  money  for  less  labor,  and  the  soci- 
ologist is  absorbed  in  demonstrating  that  everybody 
ought  to  be  helped  in  some  manner,  by  somebody,  to 
something.  So  at  last,  weary  of  hearing  the  spade 
called  a  shovel,  weary  of  being  told  to  look  There 
when  the  trouble  is  Here,  I  have  made  a  dash  at  the 
subject  myself,  with  the  thought  that  perhaps  others 
may  be  led  thereby  to  consider  it  more  fully  and  more 
scientifically. 

This  is  not  the  kind  of  book  that  one  writes  for 
pleasure.  To  talk  of  our  national  successes  is  more 
agreeable  than  pointing  out  our  national  shortcomings. 
Possibly  that  is  why  the  orator  and  the  writer  choose 
to  enlarge  upon  our  virtues,  our  energy  and  cleverness, 
our  possessions,  our  sheer  "bigness."  But  whatsoever 
of  good  lies  with  us  we  already  know.  Everyone  tells 
us  about  it  until  our  conceit  and  complacency  have 


VI  PREFACE 

grown  colossal.  To  start  upon  another  tack  and  speak 
of  mean  ambitions,  low  aims  and  positive  evils  is  to  be 
called  a  pessimist,  a  scold,  or  an  altogether  gloomy 
person.  The  reviewer  demolishes  you  with  a  sentence 
about  the  need  of  constructive  rather  than  destructive 
criticism,  and  the  galled  jade  in  the  street  perhaps 
winces  out  something  ancient  about  a  lack  of  the  sense 
of  humor.  There  is  nothing  pleasant  in  telling  peo- 
ple to 

"Leave  sack  and  live  cleanly." 

And  yet  if  the  man,  or  the  nation,  is  ever  to  "live 
cleanly"  he  must  be  told  that  "sack"  is  the  main  cause 
of  his  uncleanliness.  As  I  conceive  the  evil  of  these 
American  days,  it  lies  in  our  ambition  for  mere  wealth, 
for  objective  possessions,  for  material  successes.  This 
has  passed  of  recent  years  into  a  greed  of  gain,  and  our 
American  virtue  of  thrift,  with  which  no  one  could 
quarrel,  has  turned  into  an  American  vice  of  avarice. 
It  has  made  us  the  wealthiest  nation  in  the  world,  and 
we  pride  ourselves  on  this  success;  but  I  have  had  the 
temerity  in  these  pages  to  suggest  that  there  are  other 
and  perhaps  nobler  successes  than  the  accumulation 
of  wealth,  and  that  a  man,  or  a  nation,  may  be  rich 
and  yet  signally  fail  of  being  a  factor  in  human  well- 
being  or  human  progress. 

With  what  power  lay  in  my  elbow  I  have  made  a 
"drive"  at  the  American  money  ideal  and  the  means 
of  its  attainment,  at  business  legislation,  compensation, 


PREFACE  vii 

and  education,  at  our  commercialized  professions,  at 
the  "development"  of  the  country  by  the  exhaustion 
of  our  national  resources,  at  the  wide  trail  of  waste 
left  by  the  "developers,"  at  our  modern  towns  with 
their  lack  of  stability  and  our  open  country  with  its 
lack  of  improvement,  at  our  false  notions  of  money  and 
what  it  will  do  for  us,  at  the  idea  that  wealth  will 
insure  weal,  and  at  the  commoner  fallacy  that  the  rich 
are  happier  than  the  poor.  My  only  regret  in  all  this 
is  that  I  have  not  had  more  power  and  more  skill  in 
wielding  the  driver.  Beyond  that  I  have  no  apology 
whatever  to  make.  For,  in  the  main,  the  truth,  as 
many  people  see  it,  has  been  told,  let  Business  say 
what  it  will. 

Nor  shall  I  apologize  for  suggesting  at  the  end  the 
necessity  of  the  moral  element  in  our  national  life. 
In  the  final  appeal  the  salvation  of  the  nation,  as  of 
the  individual,  lies  in  the  acceptance  of  the  Ten 
Commandments  and  the  gospel  of  love  and  faith. 
They  have  always  existed;  it  is  safe  to  say  they 
always  will  exist.  The  gilded  generation  of  to-day  has 
no  substitute  to  offer  for  them.  They  are  things  of  the 
mind  and  the  heart  that  cannot  be  bought,  neither  can 
they  be  bribed  to  keep  silence.  In  the  long  run  they 
will  surely  bring  every  one  of  us  into  judgment. 


J.  C.  V.  D. 


RUTGERS  COLLEGE, 
January,  1908, 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I.  Our  Prosperity. — The  American  millions — Our 
achievements  and  our  possessions — The  astounding  figures — The 
enormous  crops — Told  only  in  billions  of  bushels,  in  millions  of  tons 
— Hauling  the  crops  to  market — The  country  gridironed  with  rail- 
ways, but  still  not  enough — The  wear-out  of  men,  engines,  and  cars — • 
And  still  the  congestion  of  traffic — Steamers,  canal-boats,  even  trol- 
leys, at  work  in  transporting  crops  and  goods — The  same  working 
overtime  in  the  factories — The  wear-out  of  machinery — New  power- 
houses required — The  volume  of  goods  produced — Our  exports  and 
their  value — The  yearly  income  of  the  United  States — The  value  of 
the  "plant"  itself — The  distribution  of  wealth — Every  one  gets  a 
share — This  indicated  by  the  table  of  wages  compiled  by  the  Labor 
Bureau — And  again  by  Savings  Banks  deposits — And  still  further  by 
the  increased  scale  and  style  of  living — Social  life  of  the  laboring 
classes — Of  the  better-paid  or  so-called  "  upper  classes  " — The  crav- 
ing for  amusement  and  excitement — Money-getting  and  the  attempt 
to  buy  happiness — The  American  belief  in  Money  as  happiness — The 
disappointment — The  rich  more  unhappy  than  the  poor — Is  money 
an  undesirable  commodity? — The  impossibility  of  living  without  it — • 
The  rational  and  the  irrational  pursuit  of  it — Money  madness  of  the 
individual  and  the  nation — Our  prosperity  and  our  discontent — The 
richest  nation  and  the  most  unhappy — Our  continued  pursuit  of  the 
golden  will-o'-the-wisp 3 

CHAPTER  II.  Business  Aids. — Legislation  for  Business — Law- 
making  for  the  protection  of  Capital  and  Labor — Their  assumption 
of  the  titles — Their  numbers  in  the  community — Protection  for  the 
farmer — The  mill-owners  and  their  employees — Capital  protected  by 
the  tariff — Labor  protected  by  organization  and  by  Contract  Labor 
laws — No  protection  for  the  Professional,  Personal,  and  Domestic 

ix 


X  CONTENTS 

classes — Ground  between  Capital  and  Labor — Attitude  of  the  pro- 
fessional classes — Legislation  indisposed  to  help  them — Good  times 
are  hard  times  for  them — Burdened  by  the  tariff — Discriminated 
against  as  Labor — No  Contract  Labor  law  for  them — Sometimes 
"protected"  in  spite  of  protest — The  case  of  American  art — Perverse 
congressional  action — The  case  of  the  author  and  the  inventor — 
Allowed  to  collect  royalties  for  only  a  few  years — Books  and  inven- 
tions then  confiscated  to  the  State — The  arguments  of  the  congress- 
man— The  injustice  of  such  discrimination — The  professional  classes 
"impractical" — Their  ideals — Their  neglect  by  law-makers — Their 
compensation  16 

CHAPTER  III.  Wages  and  Salaries. — The  Earnings  of  Capital — 
What  it  gets  and  keeps — Its  attitude  of  grasp  and  greed — Labor 
grasping  also — Formation  of  Labor  Unions  to  force  higher  wages — 
The  quarrels  between  Capital  and  Labor — The  strikes — The  con- 
sumer pays — Cost  of  living  goes  up — The  disturbance  to  business 
and  social  life — The  small  numbers  of  organized  Labor  and  Capital — 
Their  power  to  annoy  the  larger  number — Their  arrogance — Figures 
showing  the  wages  of  organized  Labor — Report  of  the  Bureau  of 
Labor  quoted — The  high  averages  for  skilled  labor — The  comparison 
with  salaries  and  wages  paid  to  professional  classes — The  small  aver- 
age salaries  of  professors,  lawyers,  clergymen,  architects — Arguments 
pro  and  con  about  different  costs  of  living — The  mechanic  class 
versus  the  professional  class— The  distribution  of  wealth  shows  Labor 
receiving  a  greater  percentage  than  any  class  save  Capital  and  the 
Middleman 28 

CHAPTER  IV.  The  Immigrant. — The  immigrant  in  Colonial  days — 
The  heroic  quality  of  the  early  arrivals — Their  Americanism — The 
present  changed  conditions — The  immigrant  not  now  a  refugee  from 
political  and  religious  persecution — He  is  here  to  make  money — Cares 
nothing  about  our  country — Not  always  a  bona-fide  settler — The  ele- 
ments in  to-day's  immigration — Three-quarters  of  it  from  Southern 
Europe  and  Asia — The  undesirable  nature  of  the  majority — Tables 
showing  the  constituents  of  immigration — Their  questionable  value 
to  us — What  we  can  do  to  assimilate  them — Poor  results  through 
education,  marriage,  and  association — The  "levelling  down"  of  the 
nation — Experience  better  than  argument — Our  experience  in  Cali- 


CONTENTS  xi 

fornia,  in  New  York,  in  the  Middle  West— The  influx  of  Jews, 
Slovaks,  and  "Hungarians" — A  modern  instance  in  a  city  near  New 
York — How  the  immigrants  "develop"  the  country — Their  labor  and 
who  utilizes  it — Capital  needs  cheap  labor — The  steamship  companies 
and  their  part  in  immigration — What  will  Congress  do  to  stop  it? — 
Our  present  suicidal  policy 39 

CHAPTER  V.  Education  for  Business. — The  American  idea  of 
success — With  the  masses  Success  spells  Money — The  American 
teaching  and  training  for  money  success — Training  the  schoolchil- 
dren— Things  that  "pay" — The  same  tale  in  colleges  and  universities 
— Education  as  a  knowledge  of  principles  passing  away — Colleges 
teaching  a  formula  of  gain  and  turning  out  money-makers  rather  than 
scholars — Value  of  the  older  method — The  lasting  quality  of  classic 
education — The  permanent  element  of  style — The  evanescent  ele- 
ment of  facts — Style  worth  keeping  even  in  these  days — Scientific 
and  "practical"  courses  in  colleges — Elective  studies  fitting  for 
money-making — Scientific  and  Agricultural  Colleges — Industrial 
Training  Schools — Their  enormous  increase — Business  Colleges — The 
Wharton  School  of  Finance  and  Economy — Trend  of  the  universities 
toward  Business  courses — Commercializing  of  education — Shown  in 
the  students  in  professional  schools — Tables  and  figures — The  pro- 
fessions as  uncapitalized  industries 52 

CHAPTER  VI.  Commercialized  Professions. — The  professions  and 
pecuniary  rewards — Going  into  professions  for  money — The  ministry 
and  the  professor's  chair — Medicine  and  dentistry  invaded  by  money- 
makers— "All  that  the  traffic  will  bear" — The  maxim  of  the  high- 
wayman— The  law  passing  into  a  money-making  occupation — The 
lawyer-promoter — The  influx  of  the  Jews  into  these  professions — 
Commercialized  journalism — The  old  and  the  new  journalism — Yel- 
low journalism — Its  influence  for  evil — The  destructive  quality  of  the 
modern  newspaper — The  degeneracy  of  the  magazines  following  the 
press — The  ten-cent  magazines — Purely  business  ventures — Book  pub- 
lication— Books  that  "pay"  and  those  that  do  not — The  counting- 
room  versus  literature — Everything  by  the  dollar  standard — Illustra- 
tion, art,  sculpture,  architecture,  the  theatre,  all  affected  by  it — Also 
the  college  lecture-room  and  the  laboratory — Pure  and  applied 
science 64 


xii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  VII.  "  Developing"  the  Country. — Everything  comes  out 
of  the  land — The  richness  of  our  land — Its  abundant  resources — Our 
inheritance  and  its  improvement  by  us — Development  good  and  de- 
velopment bad — Farming,  stock-growing,  horticulture,  town  build- 
ing, construction  of  roads,  canals,  bridges,  harbors,  the  reasonable 
use  of  resources,  all  commendable — "Development"  by  destruction 
— The  settler  a  Vandal — Land  "boomers" — Havoc  and  spoliation — 
The  organized  companies  that  flay  the  land — Natural  resources  that 
once  used  can  never  be  used  again — Their  wanton  destruction — The 
waste  of  the  forests — Consequent  destruction  of  water  in  the  rivers — 
Increase  of  desert  area — Change  of  climate  thereby — The  prospective 
timber  famine — The  miner — The  Forty-Niners  and  the  hydraulic 
miners — Present-day  mining — The  consumption  of  coal — How  long 
is  our  petroleum  and  iron  to  last? — The  "practical"  men — Business 
and  what  it  destroys — Conservation  of  natural  resources — President 
Roosevelt's  call  to  the  governors  of  the  States — Action  demanded  to 
stop  the  destruction 79 

CHAPTER  VIII.  Waste. — The  appalling  waste  of  materials — The 
National  vice — Fifty  per  cent,  of  the  forest  timber  allowed  to  rot  on 
the  ground — How  the  lumberman  works — The  waste  of  the  miner — 
Low-grade  coals  and  ores  not  used — Cutting  out  the  tenderloin  and 
throwing  away  the  rest  of  the  carcass — Gold,  silver,  zinc,  copper, 
iron-mining,  in  the  same  reckless  way — Our  agricultural  methods — 
Destruction  of  the  land  by  cropping  without  renewal — Our  low  yields 
of  cereals  compared  with  other  countries — Baron  von  Liebig  and  Mr. 
Morrill  on  American  agriculture — The  destruction  of  the  farms  still 
going  on — The  "abandoned"  farm  a  worked-out  farm — Waste  with 
what  is  taken  out — Recklessness  of  employees — Waste  in  manu- 
factures— And  in  distribution  by  the  middlemen — Extravagance  of 
the  rich — And  of  the  poor — The  poverty  of  the  poor  caused  by  waste 
— A  phase  of  "development" — All  classes  in  America  are  extrava- 
gant   94 

CHAPTER  IX.  The  Business  Town. — The  city  recruited  from  the 
country — The  best  and  also  the  worst  classes  come  to  the  city — 
Adding  to  the  viciousness,  bad  taste,  and  hideousness  of  the  city — 
The  building  of  the  town — The  attempt  at  the  city  beautiful— Plans 
for  improving  our  large  cities — Some  of  our  attractive  cities — Note- 


CONTENTS  xiii 

worthy  signs  of  progress — But  as  yet  little  more  than  a  promise — The 
origin  of  our  towns — Their  lack  of  plan — Expediency  and  business 
considerations  rule — Expansion  of  the  average  town — The  "  block  "- 
planned  city — The  sordid  quality  of  it — The  ragged  outskirts — The 
average  city  in  appearance — Its  pretension — The  unlivable  quality  of 
our  cities — The  restless,  shifting  character  of  the  inhabitants — Busi- 
ness crowding  into  the  resident  districts — The  dirt  and  disease — The 
clatter  and  roar — And  the  signs — Outrages  of  the  advertiser — The 
annoyance  of  signs — The  better  classes  driven  out  of  town — Chasing 
the  resident  into  the  country  with  trolleys  and  telephones — Once 
more  the  signs — The  savagery  of  civilization  and  the  barbarism  of 
business — What  we  have  given  back  to  the  land — And  our  apologies 
for  it 106 

CHAPTER  X.  The  Millionaire,  Trustee. — The  general  misunder- 
standing about  money — Wealth  and  money  distinguished  apart — 
Gold,  silver,  and  the  promise-to-pay — The  worthlessness  of  all  of  them 
if  not  in  use — The  common  belief  about  the  millionaire's  money — The 
miser  of  fiction  and  the  millionaire  of  fact — Wealth  itself  not  wealth 
unless  used — "Withdrawing"  money  from  the  common  store — The 
popular  notion  of  enjoyment  by  indulgence — Money  cannot  be  used 
without  benefiting  others — The  illustration  of  a  Pacific  railway — The 
money  of  Mr.  Rockefeller  and  where  it  is — The  Duke  of  Buccleuch 
and  his  3,000  tenants — He  a  land-holder  for  their  benefit — The  man  of 
wealth  a  trustee  of  wealth  only — If  he  uses  his  wealth  he  must  benefit 
others  as  well  as  himself — Mr.  Carnegie  and  his  Gospel  of  Wealth — 
Philanthropy — The  trusteeship,  good  and  bad,  illustrated — Giving 
away  money  and  its  perils — Mr.  Rockefeller  and  his  gifts  to  the 
University  of  Chicago — Mr.  Carnegie  and  his  gifts  of  libraries — A 
supposed  Carnegie  railway  into  South  America — Material  versus  in- 
tellectual and  moral  growth — The  millionaire's  income  and  what  he 
does  with  it — The  Carnegie  Foundation  as  illustration — The  value  of 
the  millionaire  to  the  community 119 

CHAPTER  XI.  The  Struggle  for  Money. — Why  people  desire  it — 
The  power  that  money  gives — The  good  intentions  of  the  average 
millionaire — The  bad  intentions  of  some  of  them — The  corrupt  use 
of  the  money  power — The  predatory  wealthy — Mr.  Roosevelt's  war  on 
trusts  and  railways — Government  prosecutions — The  millionaires  who 


XIV  CONTENTS 

have  not  been  investigated — Hunting  out  the  sinner  rather  than  the 
sin — The  millionaire  a  much-harried  individual — Those  who  would 
take  his  place — The  money  ambition  of  youth — Getting  money  by 
hook  or  by  crook — The  disreputable  businesses  that  people  follow  for 
money — Getting  something  for  nothing — Gamblers,  speculators,  pro- 
moters— Common  thievery — Sacrificing  health,  friends,  principle, 
common  decency  for  money — What  is  lost — Developing  only  one  side 
of  our  natures — The  mental  and  the  moral  neglected — The  gratifica- 
tion of  appetites — The  physical  in  us  over-indulged — What  we  have 
done  in  intellectual  things — Our  famous  men  all  captains  of  industry 
or  practical  scientists — The  moral  phase  of  us — Our  abnormal  develop- 
ment in  business 136 

CHAPTER  XII.  Discontent. — Making  money  for  the  sake  of  having 
"a  good  time" — The  common  ambition — Living  without  work  and 
what  it  means — Excesses  and  what  they  cost  in  health — Enjoyment 
and  satiety — The  higher  standard  of  living — Getting  rich  and  enjoy- 
ing one's  money — The  average  case — The  "moving  to  town" — The 
social  education  of  the  children — Fashionable  life  and  its  pleasures — 
Extravagance  and  indulgence — The  emptiness  of  it — The  endless 
clatter  of  plate  and  knife — Ennui  and  suicide — The  wealthy  not  all 
foolish — The  sensible  use  of  wealth — The  simple  lives  of  many  mil- 
lionaires— Happiness  in  simple  things — Discontent  of  both  rich  and 
poor — The  middle  class  in  the  community — Why  the  professional 
people  are  more  content — The  difficulties  they  experience — The 
responsibility  for  the  country  upon  them — Contentment  a  subjective 
quality — Money  will  not  buy  it — Right  development  .  .  .  150 

CHAPTER  XIII.  Conclusion. — This  is  not  a  book  of  constructive 
criticism — Pointing  out  where  we  fail — A  realization  of  our  present 
condition  needed — Our  appeal  to  legislation — Ridiculous  law-making 
— Contempt  for  authority — Our  lawless  character — Some  of  the  laws 
demanded — Wealth  and  happiness  not  attained  by  legislation — The 
need  of  more  moral  sense — The  salvation  of  the  individual — Virtue  its 
own  reward — The  struggle  for  possessions — The  aspirations  for  noble 
things — The  death  in  the  harness — A  mental  and  moral  uplift  needed 
— But  we  are  not  to  be  despaired  of — A  new  prosperity  in  character 
and  a  greater  success  with  sound  public  sentiment — The  necessity  for 
continued  agitation 163 


THE  MONEY  GOD 


THE  MONEY  GOD 

CHAPTER  I 
OUR  PROSPERITY 

WITH  the  beginning  of  this  year  of  grace,  1908,  it 
must  be  apparent  to  all  mankind  that  we  are  the  richest, 
and  consequently  the  most  prosperous,  nation  on  the 
face  of  the  earth.  Everyone  in  America  has  known 
this  for  a  long  time,  and  with  cheerful  complacency 
admits  it  on  every  possible  occasion ;  but  now,  thanks 
to  our  far-flung  statistics,  Europe,  Asia,  and  the  islands 
of  the  sea  begin  to  lift  up  their  eyes  to  us  and  admire  the 
breadth  and  depth  of  our  flesh  pots.  It  is  true,  we  have 
recently  had  a  financial  flurry,  and  have  experienced  a 
temporary  stringency  in  the  money  market;  but  that 
merely  emphasizes  our  wealth,  merely  signifies  that 
we  have  not  currency  enough  to  carry  on  the  vast 
volume  of  our  business.  It  proves  us  more  marvellous 
than  ever.  And  while  the  world  stands  with  mouth 
agape,  the  American  millions  keep  heaping  up  in  un- 
thinkable numbers,  and  the  American  millionaire  con- 
tinues to  come  out  of  the  West,  like  an  Efreet  of  the 
Jinn  out  of  the  Arabian  Nights'  Entertainment,  bring- 

3 


4  THE  MONEY  GOD 

ing  under  his  cloak  dresses,  jewels,  slaves,  wealth  in 
abundance.  The  story  of  our  "bigness"  is  quite  over- 
whelming. Yet  the  end  is  not  in  sight.  We  are  not  at 
the  top  of  the  ladder,  because  we  have  still  more  won- 
derful things  to  do  before  we  pass  out  in  a  blaze  of 
glory;  but  we  are  high  enough  to  look  down  on  the 
envy  of  those  below.  For  the  moment  we  are  in  the 
sunlight,  and  those  who  would  gaze  upon  us  must  do 
it  with  shaded  brows. 

Thus  might  some  kindly  satirist  among  us  recount 
our  achievements  and  our  possessions,  but  with  the 
perhaps  unexpected  result  that  his  gentle  irony  would 
fail  as  irony  and  become  merely  the  plain  truth.  For, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  we  are  the  richest  nation  in  the 
world,  we  are  in  a  material  sense  the  most  prosperous, 
we  are  something  of  a  marvel.  An  optimist  would  find 
support  for  almost  any  large  assertion  he  might  venture 
in  the  statistics  published  by  the  general  government. 
The  bulk  of  our  growings,  our  diggings,  our  makings 
and  our  doings  generally  is  enormous.  The  crops  this 
last  year  may  be  a  little  "short"  of  what  they  were  the 
year  before,  but  they  are  still  countable  only  in  billions  of 
bushels,  in  millions  of  tons.  The  corn  crop  alone  was 
something  like  two  and  a  half  billions  of  bushels,  the 
wheat  crop  over  six  hundred  million  bushels,  the  oats 
crop  over  seven  hundred  million,  barley  and  rye  nearly 
two  hundred  million,  potatoes  nearly  three  hundred  mil- 
lion, hay  over  sixty  million  tons,  tobacco  nearly  seven 
hundred  million  pounds,  cotton  over  ten  million  bales. 


OUR  PROSPERITY  5 

The  necessity  of  hauling  these  products  to  the  mills, 
or  the  seaboard  towns,  explains  in  part  the  close  grid- 
ironing  of  the  country  with  railways.  There  are  more 
miles  of  railway  in  the  United  States  than  in  all  the 
countries  of  Europe  put  together;  but  still  not  enough. 
They  have  proved  insufficient  to  handle  the  wheat, 
corn,  oats,  cotton,  in  connection  with  mine  products 
and  general  merchandise.  For  hah*  a  dozen  years 
there  has  been  a  car  famine — not  enough  freight  cars 
to  supply  the  needs  of  shippers;  and  for  the  same 
period  there  has  been  a  locomotive  famine — not  enough 
engines  to  haul  the  trains.  Everything  that  could  be 
run  at  all  has  been  pressed  into  the  service;  but  the 
demand  (until  very  recently)  has  been  beyond  the 
supply.  Not  only  that.  There  proved  to  be  in- 
sufficient tracks,  road-beds,  bridges,  stations,  depots, 
terminals.  Millions  upon  millions  have  gone  into 
improvements  and  extensions;  but  still  not  enough. 
Then,  too,  until  a  few  months  ago,  every  available  hand 
on  the  roads  has  been  busy;  every  hour,  even  into  the 
night  and  on  Sunday,  has  been  utilized.  Men  and 
machines  have  both  been  wearing  out  trying  to  meet 
the  demand.  In  almost  every  city  traffic  has  been 
congested.  The  railway  men  have  said  continually  in 
the  last  few  years  that  they  would  welcome  a  decrease 
in  traffic,  so  great  has  been  the  pressure.  They  have 
not  been  able  to  keep  up  to  the  pace,  to  live  up  to  the 
prosperity. 

The  same  tale  has  been  brought  in  from  other  depart- 


6  THE  MONEY  GOD 

ments  of  transportation.  Coal,  iron,  copper,  lumber,  oil, 
cattle,  wool,  raw  materials  and  finished  products  have 
crowded  the  capacity  of  the  river  boats,  lake  steamers 
and  ocean  liners;  the  state  canals,  at  one  time  half 
abandoned,  have  been  pressed  into  the  service;  and  even 
the  trolleys  have  been  set  at  the  hauling  of  goods  and 
chattels.  The  product  has  been  too  huge  to  handle 
save  in  an  inadequate  way.  The  mails  were  burdened 
with  orders  and  directions  about  goods  in  transit,  the 
telegraphs  and  telephones  were  struggling  with  mes- 
sages day  and  night,  agents  and  brokers  were  travelling 
up  and  down  the  country,  like  ants  from  a  hive,  hurry- 
ing along  the  tremendous  output.  The  figures  and 
reports  of  the  various  common  carriers — the  millions 
of  tons  carried  and  the  millions  of  dollars  that  stood 
for  gross  earnings — were  almost  unbelievable.  There 
has  never  been  such  another  pull  and  haul  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  world,  such  another  volume  of  traffic,  as 
the  United  States  has  had  to  deal  with  in  the  last  half 
dozen  years. 

The  same  feverish  haste,  the  same  working  over- 
time, the  same  struggle  to  keep  up,  were  apparent  in 
the  mills  and  factories.  They  have  all  been  running 
under  high  pressure,  wearing  themselves  out,  fatiguing 
the  very  steel  and  stones  by  night-and-day  friction. 
One  item  on  the  yearly  balance-sheet  of  corporations 
has  grown  to  enormous  proportions.  It  is  "deprecia- 
tion"— the  charging  off  for  wear  and  tear  on  ma- 
chinery and  "  plant."  New  power  and  new  machines 


OUR  PROSPERITY  7 

have  had  to  be  put  in  frequently,  for  the  best-tempered 
materials  that  may  be  made  cannot  stand  perpetual 
motion.  Additions,  supplementary  power-houses,  more 
factories,  have  been  erected  from  one  end  of  the  country 
to  the  other.  Chimneys  higher  than.anything  put  up  be- 
fore have  been  reaching  into  the  upper  air,  and  towns 
that  were  once  quiet  and  sleepy  have  been  made  noisy 
with  whistles  and  bells  and  sooty  with  clouds  of  smoke. 

Again,  the  volume  of  goods  produced  last  year  by 
this  great  grind  of  wheels  and  wear  of  humanity  is 
something  quite  astounding.  Stated  in  money  it  is  in 
the  neighborhood  of  eighteen  billions  of  dollars — 
nearly  as  much  in  produce- value  as  that  of  any  half  dozen 
countries  of  Europe  put  together.  The  great  bulk  of 
this  manufacture  is  consumed  here  in  the  country; 
but  there  is  enough  sent  out  to  foreign  lands  to  pay 
all  our  debts  to  them  and  still  leave  a  balance  of  trade 
in  our  favor  of  five  hundred  millions  a  year.  If  to 
these  sums  should  be  added  the  value  of  the  annual 
output  from  the  soil  and  the  mines,  in  lumber,  oil, 
live  stock,  and  other  products  not  included  in  manu- 
factures, we  should  really  have  staggering  figures. 

And  yet  this  is  but  the  income  of  the  United  States — 
that  which  comes  in  each  year — not  the  value  of  the 
vested  interests,  not  the  value  of  the  "plant"  itself. 
In  trying  to  estimate  what  factories,  mills,  bridges, 
railways,  steamships,  are  actually  worth,  figures  become 
bewildering  and  confusing.  When  one  talks  about 
billions  he  conveys  no  meaning  to  the  average  mind. 


8  THE  MONEY  GOD 

The  sum  is  really  inconceivable.  The  farm  lands 
alone,  now  in  use  in  the  country,  are  estimated  at  over 
thirty  billions  of  dollars;  and  the  figures  that  should 
stand  as  the  equivalent  of  our  cities,  towns  and  villages, 
can  only  be  guessed  at.  It  is  really  unthinkable.  The 
American  boast  that  no  nation  in  the  history  of  the 
world  has  ever  equalled  us  hi  the  abundance  of  our 
possessions  is  not  modest;  but  it  is  true. 

Here  is  wealth  indeed  and  of  a  very  substantial  kind. 
Nor  is  it  wealth  for  the  few  and  poverty  for  the  many, 
as  some  would  have  us  think.  In  its  distribution 
every  one  in  the  community  gets  a  share.  Perhaps  it 
is  not  always  an  equitable  share,  as  the  sharer  sees  it. 
Those  who  are  identified  with  neither  capital  nor  labor, 
nor  yet  again  interested  in  agriculture  or  trade — those 
who  are  living  on  a  salary  in  a  profession  or  clerical 
position — are  likely  to  get  tails  and  ears  for  their  share; 
but,  as  a  rule,  they  do  not  make  complaint.  The 
larger  part  goes  to  capital,  labor  and  agriculture;  and 
the  steadiest  income  of  all  is  perhaps  that  of  the  middle- 
man— the  business  man  who  handles  goods  on  com- 
mission or  buys  and  sells  as  a  dealer  or  merchant. 
The  latter  is  neither  producer  nor  manufacturer.  He 
is  a  mere  handler  of  money  or  merchandise;  but  he 
takes  toll  at  every  turn,  and  eventually  the  consumer 
pays  all  the  charges.  The  distribution  of  wealth  is  so 
general,  however,  that  the  consumer  usually  has  the 
means  wherewith  to  pay.  There  are  inequalities,  to 
be  sure,  as  we  shall  see  hereafter;  but,  generally  speak- 


OUR  PROSPERITY  9 

ing,  no  one  suffers,  no  one  starves  or  goes  cold  or  is 
shelterless.  The  material  needs  are  well  enough  sup- 
plied with  all. 

That  the  distribution  of  wealth  is  general  is  indi- 
cated by  the  tables  of  wages  compiled  by  the  gov- 
ernment. There  has  never  been  a  tune  when  such 
wages,  fees,  salaries,  and  stipends  of  various  kinds 
have  been  paid  for  work  done.  That  the  laboring 
classes  are  getting  a  good  deal  more  than  enough  to 
live  on  is  indicated  again  by  the  reports  of  the  savings 
banks.  The  roll  of  depositors  keeps  increasing,  the 
savings  keep  mounting  up  each  year.  The  money  in 
the  United  States  per  capita  is  an  interesting  item  in 
statistics  perhaps,  but  it  proves  little  in  the  matter  of 
general  distribution.  The  savings  banks  give  more 
reliable  data,  but  better  even  than  these  is  the  knowl- 
edge common  to  all  of  the  increased  scale  and  style  of 
living  in  America.  The  prosperity  of  the  country  is  told 
by  the  houses  and  homes  maintained  by  the  masses. 

That  there  has  been  with  what  is  called  "  the  laboring 
classes"  a  substantial  increase  in  property  is  not  to  be 
denied.  New  homes  have  been  established  in  every  state 
and  territory;  and  within  them  what  were  once  thought 
luxuries  are  now  plain  necessities.  Those  comforts  which 
are  spoken  of  by  economists  as  so  necessary  to  a  high 
civilization,  such  as  gas,  electricity,  telephones,  baths, 
books,  pictures,  are  within  the  reach  of  all,  even  the  un- 
skilled day-laborer.  Society  too,  with  cap  and  bells,  has 
come  to  the  factory  contingent  as  well  as  to  the  smart  set. 


10  THE  MONEY  GOD 

Functions  that  correspond  to  pink  teas  take  place  in  the 
tenement-house  districts  as  on  the  avenues.  Dress, 
food,  drink,  music,  after  their  kind,  are  necessities ;  and 
an  "atmosphere"  of  style  is  promoted  by  an  abundance 
of  furniture  and  draperies.  The  array  of  carpets,  art- 
squares,  lounges,  easy-chairs,  curtains,  china,  bric-a- 
brac  and  piano,  to  be  found  in  the  home  of  the  average 
mechanic,  is  quite  astonishing. 

With  the  better  paid  classes — the  business  men,  pro- 
moters, bankers,  and  the  like — living  is  of  the  same 
type,  only  more  so.  Every  thing  is  on  an  exalted  and 
somewhat  reckless  scale  of  expenditure.  There  is  too 
much  house,  too  much  furniture,  too  much  dress,  too 
much  food,  too  much  everything.  It  is  ostentatious. 
Autos  and  horses,  yachts  and  private  cars,  are,  of 
course,  in  evidence;  and  a  restless  craving  for  amuse- 
ment or  excitement  is  everywhere.  Amusement  is,  in- 
deed, the  demand  of  all  classes  and  conditions.  Money 
seems  always  forthcoming  for  the  theatre,  the  opera, 
for  travel,  for  autos,  for  balls,  for  dinners.  From  the 
lowest  to  the  highest  there  is  a  persistent  and  con- 
tinuous attempt  at  buying  pleasure,  at  getting  some- 
thing more  for  their  money  than  a  mere  living.  The 
greater  comforts  now  obtained,  the  present  ease  and 
convenience  of  living,  as  compared  with  what  the 
fathers  endured,  do  not  seem  to  have  quite  satisfied 
them.  And  perhaps  there  is  apparent  a  shade  of 
disappointment  about  this. 

For   man,    woman,    and    child   in    this   prosperous 


OUR  PROSPERITY  11 

country  of  ours  have  been  brought  up  in  the  belief, 
time  out  of  mind,  that  money  is  synonymous  with 
happiness;  and  if  you  have  the  money  you  cannot 
choose  but  have  the  happiness  also.  It  is  something 
of  a  blow  then  to  wake  up  dully  to  the  realization  that 
we  have  the  one  and  yet  have  no  more  of  the  other 
than  formerly.  There  is  no  doubt  about  our  pos- 
session of  the  money;  there  is  no  doubt  about  its  wide 
distribution  among  us.  Those  who  think  the  rich 
are  growing  richer  and  the  poor  growing  poorer  imag- 
ine a  vain  thing.  Nearly  all  the  classes  have  more 
than  formerly;  nearly  all  are  living  more  luxuriously, 
with  greater  conveniences  and  refinements  of  civiliza- 
tion; and  nearly  all  are  more  or  less  unhappy — more 
unhappy  than  when  they  were  poorer,  less  unhappy 
perhaps  than  they  will  be  when  they  are  richer. 

What!  People  with  money  unhappy!  It  is  meant 
perhaps  that  the  underpaid  and  overworked  employees 
in  the  factories  are  unhappy,  but  not  the  millionaires 
and  capitalists?  On  the  contrary,  the  employees,  as  a 
class,  are  neither  underpaid  nor  overworked,  nor  are 
they  more  unhappy  than  their  employers.  It  is  not 
the  poor  with  us  that  are  peculiarly  unhappy,  but  the 
very  rich. 

Such  a  situation  would  seem  to  be  easily  remedied. 
The  poor  man  would  like  the  rich  man's  place;  he  will 
exchange.  What  says  Voltaire: 

"  Misere  pour  misere  je  prefere  la  votre." 


12  THE  MONEY  GOD 

Yes;  but  that  is  only  to  shift  the  burden,  and  the  new 
bearer  does  not  go  on  care-free.  Besides,  the  wealthy 
man  finds  he  has  responsibilities  to  his  friends,  part- 
ners, associates,  society  at  large.  He  is  the  trustee  of 
wealth,  not  its  absolute  owner;  and  he  will  not  be 
allowed  to  fling  his  trusteeship  to  the  winds  and  his 
money  to  the  dogs,  even  were  he  so  disposed.  Perhaps 
his  responsibilities,  coupled  with  the  abuse,  the  mis- 
representation, the  envy  of  the  mob,  have  not  a  little 
to  do  with  his  unhappiness ;  and  perhaps  the  poor  man 
who  has  few  responsibilities,  few  envious  friends,  and 
few  hounding  enemies,  is  the  happier  on  that  account. 

Is  money  then  an  undesirable  commodity?  And  is 
commercial  prosperity  to  be  considered  provocative 
of  unhappiness  ?  Certainly  not !  In  a  physical  sense, 
no  person  or  people  at  the  present  day  can  be  very 
happy  without  them.  Starvation  and  cold  were  once 
thought  aids  to  glory,  but  no  one  ever  pretended  that 
they  were  pleasure-giving.  Physical  well-being  is  a 
necessity  of  mental  well-being.  Moreover,  the  pursuit 
of  commerce,  trade,  or  manufacturing  is  just  as  honor- 
able as  any  other  calling;  and  the  getting  of  a  com- 
petence for  one's  self  or  one's  family  is  just  as  much 
of  a  duty  to-day  as  it  ever  was.  In  other  words,  the 
rational  pursuit  of  wealth  is  commendable,  wholly 
meritorious,  entirely  good  for  the  individual  and  the 
country.  But 

When  the  individual  goes  money-mad,  when  he  sees 
gold  dollars  in  the  bottom  of  his  coffee-cup,  stock 


OUR  PROSPERITY  13 

certificates  in  his  beefsteak,  and  heaven  in  the  bottom 
of  a  bank  vault,  when  he  abandons  family,  friends,  and 
country  to  run  amuck  at  morality,  honor,  and  com- 
mon decency,  stabbing  right  and  left  in  his  mad  rush 
for  wealth,  what  hope  is  there  for  happiness  ?  It  is 
time  to  call  for  an  ambulance  and  a  straight-jacket. 
When  a  nation  becomes  monomaniacal,  making  unto 
itself  a  golden  image  which  it  falls  down  before  and 
worships,  when  it  thinks  and  acts  and  legislates  for 
money  only,  when  it  turns  the  arts  and  sciences  into 
machines  for  gain,  and  scorns  the  higher  education 
and  morality  of  life,  when  it  plunders  and  tramples 
under  foot  the  most  beautiful  country  in  the  world, 
when  drunk  with  its  own  power  it  revels  in  gluttony 
and  becomes  boastful  of  its  own  selfishness,  when  it 
forgets  the  goodly  heritage  of  its  history,  forgets  its 
ideals  and  faiths  and  beliefs  and  starts  upon  a  career 
of  greed  and  grasp,  harm  who  it  will  or  may,  again, 
what  hope  is  there  for  happiness?  The  pace  is  one 
leading  to  destruction. 

But  is  it  not  true  that  we  are  the  richest  and  most 
prosperous  nation  on  the  face  of  the  earth?  Yes;  in 
a  material  sense.  And  for  that  reason  are  we  the  un- 
happiest  nation?  Not  necessarily.  And  yet,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  are  we  not,  as  a  nation,  singularly  rest- 
less, discontented,  unhappy?  In  the  midst  of  plenty, 
what  mean  these  wrangles  and  tangles,  these  snarlings 
and  quarrelings,  about  wealth  and  wages,  about  mo- 
nopoly and  franchise,  about  rebate  and  bribery,  about 


14  THE  MONEY  GOD 

loot  and  graft?  Why  is  it  that  no  American  who 
loves  his  country,  can  pick  up  a  newspaper  without 
finding  columns  of  things  that  either  make  his  blood 
rush  to  his  head  with  anger  or  to  his  cheeks  with  shame  ? 
Why  is  it  that  there  is  more  hatred  between  man  and 
man,  between  class  and  class,  here  than  in  those  "effete 
monarchies"  of  Europe  that  our  politicians  talk  about 
so  glibly  ?  Why  is  it  with  all  our  prosperity  that  there 
are  strikes  and  mobs  and  bomb-throwings  in  the  land, 
and  anarchy,  communism,  and  socialism  in  the  air? 
If  money  will  not  exorcise  these  demons  from  us,  then 
what  avails  it?  Is  it  perchance  the  very  money  that 
brings  them  to  us  ?  The  jewel  in  the  hilt  of  the  King's 
Ankus  drew  a  trail  of  blood  after  it;  it  brought  only 
misery  to  its  possessor.  Shall  we  say  as  much  for  our 
yellow  gold? 

Once  more,  no.  We  cannot  be  happy  with  money, 
and  we  cannot,  in  these  civilized  days,  be  happy  without 
it — or  its  equivalent.  It  is  the  extravagance  of  the 
money  worship — the  belief  that  money  alone  is  om- 
nipotent— that  produces  disappointment,  dissatisfac- 
tion, discontent.  The  rational  pursuit  of  it,  the  normal 
use  of  it,  its  recognition  as  a  factor  in  human  well- 
being,  are  borne  in  upon  everyone;  but  to  regard  it 
as  the  only  thing  needful  is  sheer  madness.  This, 
indeed,  is  so  true  that  it  is  trite,  so  obvious  that  it 
seems  hardly  worth  saying.  Besides,  it  has  been  said 
over  and  over  again  for  the  last  three  thousand  years. 
Everyone  nods  assent  to  it.  It  is  the  experience  of  the 


OUR  PROSPERITY  15 

ages.  But  when  was  it  ever  heeded  ?  What  people  or 
nation  ever  profited  by  it  ?  Is  there  any  hope  that  this 
western  civilization  of  ours  will  ever  try  to  practise 
the  preaching? 

Certainly  the  prospect  is  not  now  very  favorable. 
We  have  outrun  all  the  nations  of  the  earth  in  our 
pursuit  of  the  golden  will-o'-the-wisp.  The  pace  we 
have  set  leaves  others  breathless  and  ourselves  ex- 
hausted; but  there  is  no  pause.  We  boast  we  are  the 
greatest  This  and  the  richest  That,  and  in  Europe 
they  have  come  to  speak  of  our  land  as  Dollarica  in- 
stead of  America;  but  we  are  not  satisfied.  We  are 
still  pursuing.  Is  it  not  true  that  we  have  eyes  and 
hands  for  the  yellow  glitter  only?  Is  it  not  true  that 
we  are  money-mad? 


CHAPTER  II 
BUSINESS  AIDS 

IN  a  nation  so  devoted  to  business  as  the  United 
States  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  that  the  bulk  of  the 
legislation  centres  about  business  things.  Matters  of 
morality,  conduct,  social  relationship,  may  vary  with 
the  locality,  and  the  larger  legislative  bodies  do  not 
bother  with  them,  as  a  rule.  They  are  turned  over  to 
the  ordinance-making  municipality  to  do  with  as  the 
necessities  of  the  case  demand.  If  there  is  no  great 
financial  interest  involved,  and  no  large  body  of  voters 
behind  it,  a  desirable  measure  is  perhaps  not  made 
into  a  law  at  all,  but  is  enforced  by  what  is  called 
"public  opinion." 

It  cannot  be  supposed  that  the  general  government 
would  enact  statutes  about  keeping  the  Sabbath  day 
holy,  or  sending  children  to  school,  or  making  compul- 
sory the  number  of  hours  a  day  a  man  may  labor. 
The  function  of  government,  we  are  told,  is  not  to 
regulate  individual  conduct.  It  makes  laws  of  uni- 
versal application  only.  This  is  as  right  in  theory  as 
it  should  be  in  practice;  but,  unfortunately,  the  legis- 
.Jative  bodies  do  make  laws  of  special  application,  and 

16 


BUSINESS  AIDS  17 

they  make  them  largely  in  the  interest  of  that  indi- 
vidual known  as  the  Business  Man.  There  is  law- 
making  for  professional  people  too — for  artists,  writers, 
inventors,  professors,  ministers,  physicians — but  it  is 
often  unsought  and  undesirable  law-making,  often 
against,  rather  than  for,  its  supposed  beneficiaries. 

In  dispensing  legislation,  the  law-givers  seem  to  have 
in  mind  principally  two  classes,  which  may  be  de- 
scribed in  a  general  way  as  Capital  and  Labor.  These 
classes,  if  liberally  inclusive,  would  make  up  the  bulk 
of  the  thirty  millions  or  more  who  work  in  the  United 
States — every  worker  being  either  employer  (Capital) 
or  employee  (Labor).  But  there  is  no  such  inclusion 
in  the  legislative  mind.  Certain  representatives  of 
the  trade  unions  have  arrogated  to  themselves  the  whole 
title  and  right  to  Labor  because  they  happen  to  be 
organized;  just  as  certain  groups  of  Capital  have  taken 
it  upon  themselves  to  speak  and  represent  all  vested 
interests  because  they  happen  to  be  incorporated. 
The  division  of  occupations,  according  to  the  govern- 
ment statistics  of  1900,  was  about  as  follows: 

Agricultural  pursuits 11,000,000 

Manufacturing  and  Mechanical  pursuits  ....  7,000,000 

Trade,  including  clerks,  brokers,  etc 5,000,000 

Professional,  Personal  and  Domestic  service      .    .  7,000,000 

30,000,000 

It  might  be  thought  that  in  the  making  of  laws, 
specifically  for  the  getting  and  keeping  of  money, 


18  THE  MONEY  GOD 

each  one  of  these  classes  would  receive  consideration 
in  proportion  to  its  numbers;  but  such  evidently  is 
not  the  thinking  of  the  average  legislator.  The  farmer 
(Agricultural  pursuits)  gets  certain  concessions  be- 
cause he  is  a  political  factor.  Under  the  tariff  the 
larger  part  of  his  produce  is  protected  from  foreign 
competition.  He  can  usually  charge  almost  any  prices 
he  chooses  for  food  products;  and,  because  of  the  lack 
of  competition,  people  have  to  pay  them.  There  is 
some  complaint  against  his  occasional  extortions ;  but, 
as  a  rule,  the  farmer  is  considered  worthy  of  his  hire 
— a  man  to  be  encouraged.  His  worst  antagonist  is 
not  the  housekeeper,  but  the  mill-owner.  It  is  the 
latter  individual  who  is  continually  agitating  for  the 
removal  of  the  tariff  from  "raw  products."  He  wants 
the  farmer's  wool,  hides,  and  cereals  at  a  cheaper  price 
that  he  may  make  them  up  into  cheaper  goods  and 
sell  them  at  the  old  high  price.  In  other  words,  he 
wishes  to  give  the  farmer  less,  give  more  perhaps  to  his 
workmen,  and  take  more  himself. 

The  most  influential  class  in  the  community  is  un- 
doubtedly these  mill-owners  and  their  wage-earners. 
This  is  the  Manufacturing  and  Mechanical  class  of 
our  list  which,  with  clerks  and  factotums,  means  some- 
thing like  seven  million  people.  To  Capital  much  has 
been  conceded  in  legislation  because  it  furnishes  the 
sinews  of  trade.  It  builds  the  mill  and  factory,  spins 
the  cotton,  digs  the  mines,  rolls  the  iron,  pipes  the  oil. 
Taking  some  risk  in  this  once  wild-cat  country  of  ours, 


BUSINESS  AIDS  19 

it  was  originally  thought  wise  that  it  should  receive 
special  protection.  So  the  protective  tariff  was  enacted, 
whereby  it  was  made  practically  impossible  for  com- 
petition to  interfere  with  the  charge  imposed  upon  the 
domestic  consumer.  That  wisdom  (since  turned  into 
folly)  still  continues,  and  Capital  now  has  a  franchise 
of  selling  to  us  its  own  products  on  practically  its  own 
terms. 

Labor,  possessing  an  organized  vote,  has  received  of 
recent  years  very  considerate  treatment  at  the  hands  of 
both  political  parties.  Indeed,  one  might  gather  the 
impression,  from  the  discourses  of  campaign  orators  or 
the  writings  of  certain  economists,  that  the  man  in  the 
mill  was  the  only  laboring  man  in  the  States.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  latest  statistics  (1907)  give  to  or- 
ganized Labor  (as  represented  by  the  American  Fed- 
eration of  Labor,  a  merger  of  almost  all  the  labor 
unions)  about  two  million  members.  The  remaining 
five  millions  who  pursue  manufacturing,  not  being 
unionized,  are  variously  regarded  by  Labor  as  "scabs" 
and  "loafers,"  or,  what  is  nearly  as  bad,  "plutocrats" 
and  "blood-suckers."  The  two  millions,  being  banded 
together,  and  with  good  red  blood  in  the  veins  of  their 
heads,  by  dint  of  strikes,  boycotts,  threats,  and  open 
violence,  manage  to  drive  all  the  rest  of  the  workers 
before  them;  and  in  fact  they  so  terrorize  the  whole 
country  that  they  get  almost  anything  they  want. 
Practically,  no  man  who  is  not  in  the  unions  is  allowed 
to  work  in  the  trades.  It  is  possible  for  "scab"  labor 


20  THE  MONEY  GOD 

to  continue  on  its  unclean  and  unwholesome  way,  but, 
to  repeat,  it  is  not  "practical."  One  does  not  care  to 
be  ostracized  or  stoned  or  dynamited  for  the  privilege 
of  working.  Local  competition  is  thus  eliminated; 
and  as  for  foreign  competition,  it  is  sought  to  exclude 
it  by  the  Contract  Labor  laws — no  one  being  allowed 
to  import  foreign  labor  to  take  the  bread  and  butter 
out  of  the  mouth  of  the  home  worker.  Once  more, 
then,  we  have  a  condition  wherein  Labor  holds  a 
franchise  to  sell  to  us  its  skill,  or  its  awkwardness,  on 
practically  its  own  terms. 

The  Professional,  Personal  and  Domestic  classes,  in 
connection  with  the  Trade  class  of  brokers,  clerks, 
and  book-keepers,  get  no  special  legislation  of  advan- 
tage to  them — nothing  except  that  which  is  guaranteed 
under  the  Constitution  to  all  alike.  In  politics  they 
are  regarded  as  a  negligible  quantity,  though  there 
are  some  twelve  millions  of  them.  They  are  not  keen 
partisans;  their  vote  is  scattering,  and  some  of  it  is 
not  cast  at  all.  The  members  of  this  class  usually  live 
on  a  wage,  a  fee,  a  salary — a  fixed  stipend  of  some 
sort.  The  stipend  is  usually  small  and  does  not  vary 
much  from  generation  to  generation.  Prices  of  com- 
modities go  up,  but  the  salary  of  the  minister,  the 
physician,  the  soldier,  the  engineer,  does  not  go  up 
in  proportion.  Sometimes  when  there  is  a  drop  in 
prices,  owing  to  hard  times  or  over-production,  the 
teacher,  the  clerk,  or  the  artist  profits  by  the  reduction 
in  his  weekly  bills;  but  when  tunes  are  prosperous,  he 


BUSINESS  AIDS  21 

is  usually  at  his  wits  end  trying  to  keep  even  with  the 
butcher  and  the  grocer.  Generally  speaking,  the  whole 
class  lies  in  between  the  upper  and  the  nether  stones 
and  is  subject  to  pulverization.  It  is  not  Capital  be- 
cause there  is  no  great  wealth  in  it;  and  it  is  not  Labor 
because  it  does  not  take  off  its  coat,  neither  does  it 
belong  to  a  union.  In  socialistic  meetings  its  mem- 
bers are  sometimes  referred  to  as  "the  drones  in  the 
hive,"  and  occasionally  it  is  suggested  by  some  redder 
radical  than  usual  that  the  country  would  be  as  well 
off  if  they  were  all  drowned  or  shot. 

Many  of  this  professional  or  salaried  class,  though 
they  draw  their  salaries  regularly  enough,  are  not  pri- 
marily money  makers.  They  are  working  because  they 
are  in  a  tread-mill  and  cannot  get  out,  or  because  they 
like  their  occupation  better  than  money,  or  because 
they  feel  they  are  needed  in  certain  places,  or  because 
they  want  to  educate  or  uplift  or  somehow  help  man- 
kind. This,  according  to  popular  standards,  is  a 
fatally  erroneous  way  of  regarding  life.  If  one  wants 
his  share  of  this  world's  goods  he  must  fight  for  it,  or 
at  least  make  himself  so  disagreeable  that  others  will 
give  place  to  him.  There  are  many  in  the  professions 
who  do  make  themselves  heard  disagreeably  enough; 
but  they  are  not  in  the  majority.  The  class,  as  a  class, 
still  stands  aloof,  gets  little,  and  says  little.  Of  course, 
the  legislator  is  not  inclined  to  do  much  for  it.  He 
can  afford  to  neglect  it  because  it  is  not  organized,  nor 
unionized,  nor  incorporated;  nor  does  it  use  its  power 


22  THE  MONEY  GOD 

at  the  polls  as  it  might.  It  does  not  attempt  to  force 
an  increase  of  stipend.  It  takes  what  it  can  get  and 
thanks  the  Lord  it  is  not  less. 

To  such  people  the  tariff  is  not  a  help  but  a  burden. 
Professional  men  have  nothing  to  sell  but  their  brains 
or  their  skill,  and  the  tariff  was  never  designed  to  help 
either  of  them.  For  years  the  teacher,  the  physician, 
the  engineer,  the  writer,  the  artist,  have  paid  abnormal 
prices  for  food  and  clothing,  loyally  supporting  the 
tariff  to  their  own  loss,  because  they  believed  it  was 
helping  the  laboring  man,  putting  manufactures  upon 
their  feet,  promoting  the  general  good  of  the  whole 
country.  During  the  recent  period  of  great  prosperity 
they  have  been  experiencing  adversity.  It  has  been 
difficult  for  them  to  live  and  keep  out  of  debt,  so  high 
has  been  the  cost  of  living,  so  very  slight  has  been  the 
advance  in  salaries  received. 

If  this  class  is  absolutely  discriminated  against  by 
the  action  of  the  tariff — discriminated  against  because 
it  is  not  Capital — it  is  even  worse  treated  because  it  is 
not  Labor.  The  Contract  Labor  laws  are  not  in  force 
to  protect  professional  people  from  outside  competition. 
A  foreign-born  steam-fitter,  mason,  printer,  or  plumber 
may  not  land  on  American  soil  with  a  contract  to  work 
in  his  pocket  without  being  subject  to  deportation,  and 
his  employer  to  penalty  under  the  law.  Importation 
of  foreign  labor  is  forbidden.  Our  own  laborers  must 
have  the  work.  But  French  or  German  professors 
come,  as  they  please,  to  our  colleges  and  universities, 


BUSINESS  AIDS  23 

English  lecturers  galore  talk  from  the  American  plat- 
form, English  writers  and  novelists  appear  in  the  Amer- 
ican magazines,  European  inventors,  scientists,  phy- 
sicians, ministers,  opera  singers,  actors,  keep  arriving 
here  to  do  work  under  contract;  but  no  one  raises  a 
voice  of  protest.  Indeed,  the  professional  people  here 
welcome  them.  They  would  scorn  to  place  anything  in 
the  way  of  a  free  interchange  of  ideas,  advancement  in 
knowledge,  and  progress  in  the  respective  professions. 
Moreover,  they  are  self-reliant  enough  not  to  wish  any 
protection.  No  doubt,  they  would  make  more  money 
if  European  ideas  and  their  originators  were  excluded 
from  the  country;  but  they  wish  no  such  benighted 
policy  in  their  behalf. 

Yet  occasionally  a  professional  man  finds  himself 
protected  in  spite  of  protest.  There  is,  for  instance, 
a  tariff  on  art  which  is  supposed  to  protect  the  American 
artist  by  keeping  out  foreign  competition — foreign 
pictures,  for  example.  But  that  is  precisely  what  the 
American  artist  does  not  want.  For  twenty-five  years 
he  has  been  asking  the  different  political  parties  to 
remove  that  tariff.  He  wants  foreign  art,  ancient  and 
modern,  to  come  into  these  United  States,  not  only  as 
a  means  of  self-education,  but  as  a  great  help  in  edu- 
cating his  American  constituency.  Again  and  again 
has  this  argument  been  presented  to  Congress;  but 
the  tariff  is  still  in  force.  There  has  been  flung  back 
the  insincere  answer  that  you  cannot  tax  the  poor  man's 
dinner  pail  and  not  the  rich  man's  pictures.  Every 


24  THE  MONEY  GOD 

congressman  who  has  hidden  behind  that  dinner-pail 
knows  that  art  is  not  consumed  like  food,  that  the  rich 
man  owns  the  pictures  only  for  a  day,  that  he  lends  them 
freely  to  public  exhibitions;  and  that  eventually  they 
go  (by  bequest)  to  public  museums,  where  they  are  for 
the  education  and  the  enjoyment  of  all  alike.  The 
artist  is  not  benefited  by  the  tariff,  for  you  cannot 
compel  people  to  buy  American  books  and  pictures  as 
you  can  American  beef  and  bread;  and  the  public  is 
the  loser  by  just  the  amount  of  the  excluded  art. 

Tariffs  and  labor  laws  are  harmful  to  the  profes- 
sional classes  both  positively  and  negatively.  They  are 
costly  to  maintain  for  others;  they  are  ruinous  when 
maintained  for  themselves.  And  there  is  discrimina- 
tion of  a  most  unjust  nature  against  certain  profes- 
sional classes,  owing  to  further  perverse  congressional 
action.  Let  me  illustrate  that.  A  poverty-stricken 
author,  working  in  the  traditional  garret,  writes  a  book 
which  is  published.  He  competes  with  all  the  world 
of  literature  in  the  past,  in  all  the  languages  dead  and 
living;  but  he  is  not  protected  by  any  tariff  in  the  sense 
that  a  shoemaker  is  protected  in  making  his  shoe  or  a 
watchmaker  in  making  his  watch.  The  printer,  the 
bookbinder,  the  paper  man  who  furnishes  the  paper 
for  his  book,  are  protected  well  enough.  You  cannot 
publish  any  foreign  set  or  cast  books  in  the  United 
States,  or  bring  in  any  paper  or  cloth  without  paying  a 
duty-penalty.  But  the  author  is  allowed  to  shift  for 
himself.  He  can  better  Shakespeare  and  Goethe  or 


BUSINESS  AIDS  25 

starve  in  his  garret.  He  is  not,  however,  left  entire 
master  of  his  book  and  his  labor.  Legislation  does 
not  help  him,  but  it  does  not  completely  neglect  him. 
For  it  declares  that  eventually  he  has  no  right  what- 
ever in  his  own  book. 

This  is  the  way  it  is  done.  The  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  guarantees  to  every  one  the  inalienable 
right  of  possessing  and  holding  continuously,  in  fee 
simple,  all  kinds  of  property  both  real  and  personal. 
The  capitalist  cannot  be  ousted  from  his  factory  or 
home  any  more  than  the  farmer  from  his  farm,  or  the 
blacksmith  from  his  shop.  The  shoemaker  has  an  in- 
alienable right  in  his  shoes,  the  silk  manufacturer  in  his 
silks,  the  furniture-maker  in  his  furniture,  They  and 
their  heirs  and  assigns  can  do  what  they  please  with 
their  own,  indefinitely  and  for  all  time.  But  not  so 
with  the  author.  He  has  no  inalienable  right  in  his 
book.  Legislation  grants  him  the  privilege  of  a  copy- 
right. He  can  collect  a  royalty  on  it  for  a  certain 
number  of  years  only.  After  that  it  is  "confiscated  to 
the  state,"  made  public  property.  Any  one  can  re- 
print or  publish  it  as  it  pleases  him,  without  remunera- 
tion to  the  author,  and  without  even  his  consent. 

Another  poor  wretch,  the  inventor,  is  in  the  same 
boat  with  the  author  as  regards  the  treatment  of  his 
property.  He  does  not,  cannot  own  his  own  inven- 
tions. Legislation  graciously  gives  him  a  patent  for 
a  number  of  years,  and  then  throws  down  the  bars  and 
allows  the  public  to  walk  into  his  preserve  and  help 


26  THE  MONEY  GOD 

itself.  Of  course  there  are  reasons  given  and  excuses 
made.  The  perfervid  congressman  gets  on  his  feet 
to  say  that  there  is  "no  such  thing  as  property  in  an 
idea,"  It  is  not  tangible,  cannot  be  picked  up,  and 
hence  is  non-existent.  Admirable!  But,  somehow, 
there  is  enough  "property"  found  about  it,  or  in  it,  to 
turn  over  to  the  public  later  on.  And  again,  we  are  in- 
formed that  it  is  in  the  interests  of  the  public  that  the 
people  should  have  good  literature,  and  plenty  of  it, 
cheap;  that  it  should  have  the  benefit  of  labor-saving 
inventions  and  time-saving  machinery.  Admirable 
again!  By  the  same  token  it  would  be  a  good  thing, 
no  doubt,  that  the  public  should  have  shoes  and  hats 
cheaper;  but  we  have  not  heard  it  advocated  that  the 
general  government  should  break  into  the  mills  of  the 
shoemaker  and  the  hatter  and  confiscate  their  goods. 
Everything  comes  cheaper  when  payment  is  evaded. 
The  advanced  socialist  has  some  such  notion  in  his 
head.  He  advocates  government  confiscation  of  all 
property.  Such  a  course  would  no  doubt  be  destruc- 
tive, but  at  least  it  would  not  discriminate  among  those 
it  would  destroy. 

Of  course,  the  weak  side  of  the  professional  classes, 
as  a  politician  or  business  man  would  put  it,  is  that 
they  are  "impractical."  They  should  combine,  or- 
ganize a  professional  union,  quarrel,  wrangle,  and 
disturb  the  public  peace  like  the  rest  of  the  unions. 
Then  they  might  force  legislation  at  the  muzzle  of  the 
ballot,  and  make  arrogant  demands  for  themselves  and 


BUSINESS  AIDS  27 

against  every  one  else.  But  they  have  no  idea  of  doing 
any  of  these  things.  They  rather  scorn  such  actions. 
Some  of  them  are  even  foolish  enough  to  talk  about 
the  moral  aspect  of  things;  and  to  conjure  with  such 
words  as  order,  decency,  and  justice.  All  of  which  is 
very  unbusiness-like,  and  possibly  very  stupid.  For 
what  now  avails  the  plea  of  a  body  of  surgeons  in  the 
public  hospitals  that  it  would  be  the  proper  thing  to 
allow  them  to  import,  free  of  duty,  certain  foreign- 
made  instruments,  that  it  would  benefit  both  surgeon 
and  patient,  and  be  an  advantage  to  an  unpaid  as  well 
as  a  non-paying  class?  What  now  avails  the  request 
of  the  architects  that  they  be  allowed  to  import,  free  of 
duty,  photographs  of  European  architecture  for  use  in 
their  city  building?  Who  listens  to  the  college  pro- 
fessor when  he  asks  for  duty-free  maps,  or  rare  texts 
for  class-room  use  in  the  teaching  of  his  pupils?  The 
legislator  knows  very  well  that  these  men  are  not 
political  factors,  and  that  they  can  be  "turned  down" 
with  impunity. 

Naturally  enough,  the  "impractical"  twelve  millions 
can  make  little  more  money  than  is  sufficient  to  keep 
them  from  want.  Capital  comes  first,  Labor  next;  and 
the  clerk,  the  physician,  the  minister,  the  librarian,  the 
school  teacher,  get  what  is  left  on  the  plate.  Indeed, 
the  average  fixed  salary  of  this  class  is  so  much  smaller 
than  is  usually  supposed  that  it  is  worth  considering 
in  a  separate  chapter. 


CHAPTER  III 
WAGES  AND  SALARIES 

IN  speaking  of  the  compensation  received  by  the 
different  classes  in  our  business  and  professional  world, 
perhaps  it  will  not  be  necessary  to  recite  the  earnings 
of  Capital.  These  are  days  of  trusts  and  corporations 
and  multi-millionaires,  and  every  one  in  this  country 
is  convinced,  beyond  the  possibility  of  any  different 
conviction,  that  Capital  realizes  handsomely  on  its  in- 
vestments. This  may  be  accepted  not  only  as  convic- 
tion, but  as  statistical  fact.  However  others  may  fare, 
Capital  generally  manages  to  look  after  itself.  That 
it  helps  others  while  helping  itself  is  true;  that  it  can- 
not choose  but  share  the  benefit  of  its  earnings  with 
the  community  at  large  we  shall  see  hereafter;  but 
that  in  its  initial  impulse  it  means  to  get  the  largest 
part  for  its  own  exclusive  use  and  power  is  also 
beyond  dispute.  It  is  not  by  nature  philanthropic. 
It  gains  what  it  can  and  holds  it  as  long  as  it  can. 

This  attitude  of  grasp  and  greed  is  just  as  marked 
with  Labor  as  with  Capital.  The  labor  unions  were 
organized  ostensibly  to  further  fraternal  association, 

28 


WAGES  AND  SALARIES  29 

education,  trade  conditions  of  one  kind  and  another; 
but  in  reality  they  were  formed  to  force  higher  wages, 
more  compensation.  It  is  naively  thought  by  some 
people  that  the  higher  wage  thus  forced  comes  out 
of  Capital;  but,  of  course,  the  extra  wage-payment 
is  tacked  on  the  price  and  eventually  paid  by  the  con- 
sumer.1 The  consumer  always  has  to  pay.  But  about 
that  Labor  neither  knows  nor  cares.  It  wants  its 
money,  and  it  wants  it  in  an  increasing  ratio  or  else  it 
will  strike.  And  strike  it  does  with  increasing  regu- 
larity. In  the  United  States  in  the  year  1900  it  struck 
more  than  seventeen  hundred  times.  The  strike  is  usu- 
ally accompanied  by  disaster  to  all  parties  concerned. 
And  it  should  be  noticed  that  it  concerns  all  parties. 
If  Capital  and  Labor  were  two  isolated  individuals  that 
could  go  over  into  the  next  county  and  hack  at  each 
other's  throats  without  disturbing  the  community  at 
large,  no  one  would  have  much  cause  of  complaint; 
but  the  trouble  is  they  are  always  quarrelling  in  public 
places,  making  a  disturbance  in  the  street  and  on  one's 
door-step.  Everybody  is  involved,  business  cannot  go 

1  After  the  Anthracite  Coal  Strike  of  1902  was  settled,  by 
Presidential  interference,  coal  advanced  $1.25  a  ton  to  the 
consumer.  After  the  Beef  Trust  was  "busted"  through 
governmental  action,  beef  advanced  in  price  immediately. 
If  the  Standard  Oil  Corporation  is  dissolved  by  the  Federal 
Courts  (hypothetically  a  violation  of  the  rights  of  the  State 
of  New  Jersey  which  incorporated  it),  and  if  the  interstate 
railways  are  taken  over  by  the  government  (hypothetically 
a  violation  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  which 
guarantees  their  right  to  hold  property),  we  may  look  to 
paying  higher  prices  for  oil  and  transportation. 


30  THE  MONEY  GOD 

on,  the  ordinary  pursuits  of  life  are  badly  jostled,  there 
is  no  peace  for  either  mind  or  body. 

If  the  situation  were  put  down  in  figures  it  would 
read  something  like  this :  Organized  Labor  with  us  can 
muster  something  over  two  million  members;  incor- 
porated Capital  possibly  two  hundred  thousand  mem- 
bers. For  the  sake  of  argument,  let  us  concede  two 
millions  to  Capital  and  five  millions  to  both.  There 
are  some  eighty  or  ninety  millions  of  people  in  the 
United  States,  but  let  us  discard  all  but  the  thirty 
millions  of  actual  workers — casting  out  the  women  and 
children  with  the  lame,  the  halt,  and  the  blind.  Our 
figures  now  indicate  that  the  five  millions  of  Capital 
and  Labor,  with  their  various  quarrels  and  bickerings, 
are  keeping  twenty-five  millions  in  continuous  hot 
water.  It  is  the  differences  of  these  people  that  are 
not  only  turning  the  business  world  topsy-turvy  every 
few  weeks,  but  the  professional  and  social  world  as 
well.  They  practically  control  the  cost  of  living  through- 
out the  country,  and  every  time  they  come  to  blows  the 
cost  is  materially  enhanced.  In  itself  that  is  sufficient 
to  disconcert  the  average  individual  in  the  community. 
He  does  not  know  where  he  stands.  Add  to  this  the 
unhappiness  that  is  bred  of  these  quarrels,  the  state  of 
unrest,  the  mental  strain  of  living  in  a  never-ending 
jangle;  and  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  suffer- 
ing community  in  between  should  finally  exclaim  in  its 
wrath:  "A  plague  o'  both  your  houses  !" 

There  is  no  satisfying  either  party.    No  sooner  is  a 


WAGES  AND  SALARIES  31 

monstrous  trust  formed  than  a  monstrous  union  crops 
up  to  meet  it.  The  leeching  and  badgering  of  the  in- 
termediate public  then  goes  on  with  greater  celerity  than 
ever.  Capital,  thanks  to  the  tariff,  has  for  years  been 
taking  more  than  its  share  of  profits;  and  now  Labor, 
by  virtue  of  its  organized  strength,  is  taking  more  than 
its  due  of  wages.  Of  course,  Labor  denies  this,  and 
does  not  even  care  to  discuss  the  matter.  It  makes 
demands,  and  if  they  are  not  conceded  it  makes  trouble. 
This  is  all  of  a  piece  with  the  arbitrary  raising  of  prices 
by  Capital,  or  the  equally  arbitrary  insistence  of  a 
farmer-legislature  that  railways  shall  carry  them  and 
their  produce  at  rates  of  farmer-manufacture.  Money- 
makers of  all  kinds  soon  arrive  at  a  stage  of  arrogance; 
and  that  Labor  is  a  money-maker  can  be  easily  proved 
by  statistics. 

Figures  giving  general  averages  of  wages  are  not 
always  satisfactory  guides.  For  instance,  during  the 
Steel  strikes  in  Pittsburg  in  1892 — a  period  of  depres- 
sion— the  evidence  before  the  Congressional  Committee 
that  afterward  investigated  the  strike  and  its  causes, 
showed  that  the  lowest  wage  paid  for  unskilled  labor 
in  the  Carnegie  Steel  Works  was  $1.40  a  day,  and  that 
the  best  wage  paid  for  skilled  labor  (that  is,  the  "roll- 
ers") was  $15.00  and  $16.00  a  day.  It  is  difficult  to 
average  the  wages  of  the  thousands  in  the  mills  who 
are  in  between  such  extremes  as  these,  and  still  give 
one  an  adequate  idea  of  what  Labor  in  the  Steel  in- 
dustry is  really  receiving.  However,  the  government 


32 


THE  MONEY  GOD 


bureaus  with  their  expert  statisticians  have  analyzed 
and  modified  the  averages  of  the  Labor  wage,  and  their 
figures  1  will  prove  suggestive  as  regards  certain  trades 
at  least.  The  trades  that  have  organized  unions  and 
belong  to  the  American  Federation  of  Labor  are  pur- 
posely chosen  in  order  to  show  that  these  persistent 
strikers  and  disturbers  of  commerce  are  receiving,  as  a 
class,  larger  wages  than  any  other  wage-earning  or 
salary-getting  class  in  the  community.  Fractional  fig- 
ures of  hours  and  wages  are  both  omitted  for  conven- 
ience of  statement. 


AVERAGE 
HOURS 
PER  WEEK 

AVERAGE 
WAGES 
PER   HOUR 

AVERAGE 
WAGE3 
PER  WEEK 

Blacksmiths  

56 

$  .30 

$16.80 

Bricklayers   

46 

62 

28  52 

Carpenters    

48 

.40 

19.20 

Gas-fitters     

46 

51 

23.46 

Stone-cutters      .... 
Painters    

46 

47 

.52 
.38 

23.93 

17.86 

Paper-hangers   .... 
Plasterers      

48 
46 

.41 
.60 

19.68 
27.60 

Plumbers  

46 

.54 

24.84 

Steam-fitters      .... 
Newspaper  Compositors, 
Newspaper  Linotypers    . 

47 
47 
47 

.50 
.51 
.56 

23.50 
23.97 
26.32 

For  men  employed  in  factories  or  mills,  the  wage 
varies  with  the  skill  or  hazard  of  the  work;   and,  as  a 
1  "Bulletin  of  the  Bureau  of  Labor,"  No.  71,  July,  1907 


WAGES  AND  SALARIES 


33 


rule,  is  perhaps  lower  than  for  men  working  outside 
the  factories. 


AVERAGE 

AVERAGE 

AVERAGE 

HOURS 

WAGES 

WAGES 

PER  WEEK 

PER  HOUR 

PER  WEEK 

Cabinet-makers      .     .     . 

55 

$    .26 

$14.30 

Stone-cutters      .... 

56 

.28 

15.68 

Iron-moulders   .... 

56 

.32 

17.92 

Pottery-dippers  .... 
Glass-blowers    .... 
Steel-rollers  

44 
42 
66 

.54 
.90 
83 

23.76 
37.80 

54  78 

In  transportation  the  same  high  average  of  wages  is 
maintained  for  skilled  Labor. 


AVERAGE 
WAGES 
PER  DAY 

AVERAGE 
WAGES 
PER  WEEK 

1  Locomotive  Engineers  (1904)  . 
Locomotive  Firemen      .     .     . 
Conductors  

$4.10 

2.35 
3.50 

$24.60 

14.10 
21.00 

Trainmen     

2.27 

13.62 

Section  Foremen  

1.78 

10.68 

Telegraph  Operators      .     .     . 

2.15 

12.90 

It  is  now  worth  while  to  institute  a  comparison  be- 
tween these  figures  of  the  Labor  Bureau  which  stand 

1  Strong,  Social  Progress,  1907,  is  the  authority  for  the 
item  of  Locomotive  Engineers;  but  the  estimates  for  these 
railway  employees  are  hardly  high  enough,  for  they  do  not 
take  into  account  the  extra  wages  allowed  them  for  working 
overtime.  All  the  other  estimates  are  taken  from  the  "Bul- 
letin of  the  Bureau  of  Labor,"  No.  71,  July,  1907. 


34  THE  MONEY  GOD 

for  the  wages  of  Labor,  and  such  figures  as  may  be 
arrived  at  as  the  average  compensation  in  the  pro- 
fessions. Unfortunately,  the  latter  are  not  easily  as- 
certained. The  Labor  Bureau  does  not  furnish  them 
— the  government  not  having  as  yet  shown  any  great 
concern  about  the  wages  of  artists,  lawyers,  doctors, 
and  clergymen.  In  estimating  them,  one  can  give  only 
the  general  consensus  of  opinion  of  people  in  each 
profession.  Those  outside  of  what  are  called  "the 
learned  professions"  gather  the  impression  that  law, 
for  instance,  is  extremely  well  paid,  because  they  hear 
that  So-and-So,  who  is  more  of  a  promoter  and  cor- 
poration broker  than  a  practitioner  at  the  bar,  makes 
$100,000  a  year.  But  these  large  incomes  are  few  at 
best,  are  confined  to  the  very  large  cities,  and  are  cut 
down  in  the  general  average  by  the  thousands  of  lawyers 
between  Maine  and  California  who  do  not  perhaps 
make  $1,000  a  year.  In  taking  the  general  average  of 
the  incomes  of  lawyers  throughout  the  country,  as  we 
have  the  wages  of  unionized  Labor,  perhaps  $1,500  a 
year  would  be  a  high  estimate.  New  York  lawyers,  not 
one  but  dozens  of  them,  declare  that  it  is  too  high,  even 
for  New  York  City.  Just  so  with  the  salaries  of  college 
professors.  Three  estimates  have  been  made.  Presi- 
dent Pritchett  of  the  Carnegie  Foundation,  who  esti- 
mated only  the  higher  grades  of  colleges  and  professors, 
says  the  average  is  $1,550  per  year.  The  late  President 
Harper  of  the  University  of  Chicago  made  it  out  $1,470 
per  year.  President  Moffat  of  Washington  and  Jeffer- 
son College,  who  averaged  four  hundred  and  eighty-one 


WAGES  AND  SALARIES 


35 


salaries  in  denominational  colleges,  gives  it  as  $808  per 
year.  I  have  no  alternative  but  to  average  these  three 
estimates,  and  say  $1,276;  and  yet  I  am  quite  sure  that 
even  this  is  too  high  a  figure. 

As  for  the  incomes  of  physicians,  clergymen,  authors, 
and  artists  we  again  have  in  mind  some  friend  in  one 
or  the  other  of  the  callings  who  is  reported  as  making 
$10,000  a  year;  but  such  people  are  to  be  counted  upon 
one's  fingers.  There  are  exceptionally  high  wages  paid 
to  "top  men"  among  the  ranks  of  Labor  too;  but  we 
are  now  dealing  with  the  average  wages  of  the  average 
man,  not  alone  with  the  salary  of  the  star  performer. 


AVERAGE 
SALARY 
PER  YEAR 

AVERAGE 
SALARY 
PER  WEEK 

1  Lawyers  

$1,500.00 

$28.84 

College  Professors     .... 
Tutors  and  Instructors  .     .     . 
2  School  Teachers  (per  month)  . 
Clergymen   

1,276.00 
600.00 
47.97 
700.00 

24.53 
11.53 
11.99 
13  46 

1,000.00 

19.23 

1  Dentists  

1,200.00 

23.07 

Librarians    

700.00 

13  46 

Journalists  

800.00 

15.38 

1  Architects    

1,000.00 

19.23 

Authors  

500.00 

9  61 

Artists     .    

500.00 

9.61 

1  People  in  these  professions  have  to  pay  for  office  rent, 
which  should  properly  be  deducted  from  the  income  if  we 
are  to  arrive  at  their  average  salaries  in  comparison  with  the 
other  professions  or  with  skilled  Labor. 

1  Report  of  the  United  States  Commissioner  of  Education, 
1905. 


36 


THE  MONEY  GOD 


Even  in  the  field  of  less  skilled  and  unskilled  Labor 
the  unions  manage  to  gain  for  their  men  more  money 
than  the  same  time  and  effort  bring  outside  of  the 
organizations. 


AVERAGE 

AVERAGE 

AVERAGE 

HOURS 

WAGES 

WAGES 

PER  WEEK 

PER  HOUR 

PER  WEEK 

1  Laborers  (trades)      .     . 

56 

$    .20 

$11.20 

1  Laborers  (streets)     .     . 

49 

.22 

10.78 

1  Hod-carriers    .... 

47 

.32 

15.04 

The  figures  that  may  be  conservatively  placed  as  the 
wages  of  unorganized  Labor,  or  the  wages  of  semi- 
professional  people  such  as  book-keepers,  clerks,  and 
domestics,  are  about  as  follows: 


AVERAGE 
WAGES 
PER  DAY 

AVERAGE 
WAGES 
PER  WEEK 

*  Laborers  (farms)  

«i    10 

3pi  .  1O 

OR    70  without  board, 
WV.tO       ,„  I903 

8.00 
9.00 

5.00  with  board 
10.00 

Clerks  in  stores  (men)  .    .    . 
Clerks  in  offices    

Domestics  (men)  

Book-keepers         

1  "Bulletin  of  the  Bureau  of  Labor,"  July,  1907. 
*  Strong,  Social  Progress,  1907. 


WAGES  AND  SALARIES  37 

There  are  stock  arguments  for  the  laborer  and  his 
wage  versus  the  professional  man  and  his  salary,  which 
do  not  vitally  concern  us  at  this  moment.  I  mean  the 
arguments,  pro  and  con,  as  to  which  is  the  more  arduous, 
hand  work  or  head  work;  about  time  required  in  edu- 
cation for  the  work;  about  hours  of  work;  about 
different  costs  of  living  in  different  occupations.  The 
janitor  in  the  basement  gets  higher  wages  than  the 
teacher  in  the  school  overhead.  One  argues  his  burden 
of  responsibility  or  his  long  hours,  the  other  his  cost  of 
education.  The  college  professor  complains  that  he 
has  to  spend  so  much  of  his  salary  in  clothes,  books, 
travel;  while  the  bricklayer,  who  gets  about  the  same 
wages  as  the  professor,  complains  that  he  cannot  work 
every  week  in  the  year.  Every  one  in  a  trade,  profes- 
sion, or  occupation  of  any  kind  thinks,  naturally 
enough  perhaps,  that  his  job  is  the  most  difficult  and 
the  least  remunerative  in  existence.  Some  one  else 
seems  always  getting  the  cream  while  the  deponent 
grows  thin  on  skimmed  milk. 

There  is  much  to  be  said  on  both  sides  of  this  ques- 
tion, but  the  debating  schools  have  said  it  too  often 
for  repetition  here.  Besides,  the  figures  in  the  above 
tables  were  given  for  another  purpose,  namely:  to 
suggest  that  organized  Labor,  whether  rightfully  or 
wrongfully,  whether  by  earning  capacity  or  by  organ- 
ization, whether  by  just  desert  or  unjust  intimidation, 
gets  and  applies  to  itself  as  large,  if  not  a  larger  wage 
than  any  other  working  class  in  the  community — than 


38  THE  MONEY  GOD 

any  other  class  in  all  the  community,  save  only  Capital 
and  the  Middleman.  That  Capital  has  more,  receives 
more,  and  keeps  more,  seems  to  be  the  great  grievance 
of  Labor.  There  is  enough  and  to  spare  for  both. 
Neither  of  them  is  in  want.  But  the  spirit  is  not  to  be 
stilled  by  such  considerations.  Each  seeks  a  little 
more,  and  in  doing  so  precipitates  a  quarrel.  The 
commercial  and  social  discontent,  of  which  every  one 
in  this  country  must  be  more  or  less  conscious,  can  be 
almost  directly  traced  to  this  quarrelling  over  who  shall 
have  the  larger  share.  Money  can  always  be  relied 
upon  to  breed  hatred  and  enmity. 

But  of  that  more  anon.  The  present  chapter  will 
have  served  its  purpose  if  it  suggests  the  distribution 
of  money,  who  gets  it,  and  how  much  of  it  is  gotten. 
Capital  and  Labor  can  hardly  claim  that  they  fare 
badly  in  the  distribution.  They  have  a  coadjutor  who 
also  helps  himself  liberally.  This  person  is  the  Mid- 
dleman, who  acts  as  the  broker  or  trader  in  almost 
every  transaction  and  takes  a  percentage  of  the  profit. 
All  three  of  them  are  enlisted  under  the  banner  of 
Business,  and  we  shall  see  hereafter  that  Business  in 
America  is  not  only  king  but  emperor  and  pope  as  well. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  IMMIGRANT 

IN  the  heroic  days  of  the  Colonies  and  the  Republic 
the  immigrant  was,  rightly  enough,  invited  and  wel- 
comed to  our  shores.  He  was  a  refugee  from  political 
and  religious  persecution,  a  man  down-trodden  and 
oppressed  with  no  opportunity  to  better  his  condition; 
he  was  a  seeker  of  life  and  liberty,  or  at  least  a  soldier 
of  fortune,  who  came  here  prepared  for  hardships,  for 
struggles,  for  poverty.  He  was  then  an  altogether  ac- 
ceptable addition  to  the  community — one  who  could, 
and  did,  stand  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  our  own 
people,  and  fight  red  men  within  and  white  men  with- 
out for  the  maintenance  of  the  country.  He  fought 
for  and  won  a  home  here,  married  among  us,  became 
one  of  us ;  and  when  he  died  he  left  children  who  were 
thoroughly  American  in  spirit. 

But  all  that  has  been  changed  of  recent  years.  The 
present-day  immigrant  does  not,  as  a  rule  (the  Russian 
Jews  excepted),  complain  of  religious  or  political  per- 
secutions at  home.  He  is  not  seeking  life  and  liberty; 
he  is  not  oppressed.  As  for  the  country  he  comes  to,  he 
has  only  the  vaguest  notion  of  upholding  and  sup- 
39 


40  THE  MONEY  GOD 

porting  it;  and  perhaps  not  the  slightest  notion  of  ever 
becoming  an  integral  part  of  it.  He  comes  here  with 
an  entirely  different  idea  from  that.  Someone  has  told 
him  that  there  was  gold  to  be  picked  up  in  the  streets 
in  America,  that  it  was  a  great  place  for  getting 
rich  quick,  and  the  government  made  it  a  boast  that 
poverty  was  non-existent  in  the  land.  He  has  come 
over  with  the  thought  of  getting  the  gold,  of  becoming 
a  millionaire,  and  then  returning  to  his  Italian  or 
Istrian  shore,  a  modern  Pizarro  boasting  of  his  posses- 
sions. He  knows  little  about  either  this  country  or  its 
people,  and  cares  less;  what  he  is  after  is  our  money. 

Of  course,  this  statement  must  be  immediately  quali- 
fied, because  there  are  immigrants  and  immigrants. 
The  majority  of  the  recent  arrivals  are  not  good  citizens 
here,  there,  nor  anywhere.  Their  country  parted  with 
them  for  its  own  good.  But  there  is  a  minority  con- 
tingent of  exceptional  quality.  No  one  would  think  of 
classing,  for  instance,  the  Germans,  Swedes  and  Nor- 
wegians, who  have  settled  in  the  Northwest,  as  undesir- 
able immigrants.  On  the  contrary,  they  have  made 
excellent  farmers  and  stalwart,  conservative  citizens. 
Any  and  all  the  immigration  coming  from  the  north  of 
Europe  (Russia  with  its  provinces,  and  the  Jews,  ex- 
cepted)  may  be  characterized  as  a  very  acceptable 
class.  The  English,  the  Scotch,  the  Irish,  the  Scandi- 
navians, the  Dutch,  the  Germans,  are,  in  degree,  allied  in 
customs,  faiths,  ideals,  sentiments.  They  amalgamate, 
intermarry,  and  carry  on  the  North-of -Europe  traditions. 


THE  IMMIGRANT  41 

They  are  the  kin  of  those  who  originally  settled  Amer- 
ica, and  by  birth  are,  in  a  measure,  to  the  manner  born. 
Let  them  come.  We  have  Americans,  with  two  hun- 
dred years  of  native  ancestry  behind  them,  who  are 
not  their  equals  mentally,  morally  or  physically. 

But  what  about  the  miscellaneous  mobs  from  the 
south  of  Europe  and  Asia  that  have  been  descending 
upon  us  during  the  last  decade  or  more — the  mobs  that 
do  not  go  to  the  farms,  but  gather  in  the  cities,  in  the 
factory  towns,  and  about  the  mines  ?  In  the  year  1905 
we  admitted  1,026,499  immigrants.  Of  this  number 
276,948  came  from  Northern  Europe,  and  were  pre- 
sumably of  the  desirable  class;  749,551  came  from 
Southern  Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  and  the  islands  of  the 
sea;  and  were  just  as  presumably  of  an  undesirable 
class.  The  larger  elements  in  the  undesirables  have 
been  summarized  as  follows: 

Croatian  and  Slovenian 35,000 

Bulgarian,  Dalmatian,  Servian,  etc 8,500 

Hebrew  and  Greek 142,000 

Italian       94,000 

Japanese  and  Korean 16,000 

Lithuanian 18,500 

Magyar 46,000 

Polish 102,500 

Russian,  Ruthenian,  Roumanian 26,000 

Slovak       52,000 

Syrian,  Turkish,  and  Armenian 8,500 

It  must  be  apparent  on  its  face  that  such  elements 
as  these,  coming  from  lands  that  hold  wholly  different 


42  THE  MONEY  GOD 

views  from  our  views,  and  have  wholly  different  in- 
stitutions, standards  of  living,  and  national  ideals  from 
ours,  could  never  prove  acceptable  citizens  here  in 
America.  Indeed,  there  are  few  who  even  attempt  to 
defend  such  immigration,  save  on  the  score  of  cheap 
labor.  Mr.  Ernest  Crosby,  in  the  Arena,  has  told  us 
that  physically  these  hordes  will  help  out  our  hollow- 
chested,  nervous  race,  and  improve  us  that  way.  "From 
the  purely  scientific  standpoint  of  breeding,  we  have 
every  interest  to  admit  the  sturdy  farm-hand  just  as  we 
import  the  Percheron  horse  or  the  Southdown  sheep." l 
But,  granting  the  possibility  of  human  beings  having 
their  physique  improved  by  being  bred  like  cattle, 
what  then  ?  Are  nations  made  great  by  barbaric  brawn 
of  arm  and  muscled  backs  ?  Is  there  no  mental,  moral 
or  social  element  needed  ?  There  must,  it  would  seem, 
be  some  homogeneity  among  the  people,  some  rallying 
point  of  blood  or  faith  or  principle  or  common  welfare, 
if  unity  would  be  attained.  To  breed  and  interbreed 
different  and  undesirable  elements,  thinking  that  the 
best  in  each  will  finally  survive  and  leaven  the  product 
for  nationality  and  a  noble  race,  is  as  fatuous  as  to 
suppose  that  a  good  omelet  may  be  made  by  beating 
up  a  half-dozen  bad  eggs.  What  can  and  will  be  pro- 
duced is  a  nation  of  mongrels — a  thoroughly  worthless 
omelet.  And  bad  blood  will  tell  just  the  same  as  good 

1  For  the  reverse  of  this,  the  diseases  that  immigration 
brings  to  us,  read  the  article  in  the  North  American  Review, 
December  21,  1906,  by  Dr.  Thomas  Darlington,  President 
of  the  Board  of  Health  of  New  York  City. 


THE  IMMIGRANT  43 

blood.  Biology  has  proved  the  lasting  quality  of 
heredity.  Unto  the  fourth  and  fifth  generation  the 
stupidity  of  the  Russian,  the  cut-throat  instinct  of  the 
Sicilian,  and  the  moral  obliquity  of  the  Balkan  hordes. 
Centuries  have  not,  centuries  will  not,  change  the  low 
cunning  of  the  Jew,  the  treachery  of  the  Greek,  and  the 
rascality  of  the  Armenian.  The  less  we  have  to  do  with 
them  the  better  for  us. 

Nor  is  there  any  trust  to  be  placed  in  the  idea  of 
lifting  them  up  to  our  standard  by  association,  by 
marriage,  and  by  education.  They  do  not  rise  per- 
ceptibly, but  the  American  goes  down  to  meet  them. 
We  are  no  nobler  than  our  most  ignoble  constituency. 
To  talk  of  assimilating  such  a  mass  as  comes  in  each 
year,  to  think  of  making  them  like  ourselves  by  a  procj 
ess  of  public  schooling  for  the  children,  is  to  shoot 
arrows  at  the  sun.  Education  may  improve  any  given 
endowment,  but  it  will  not  create  a  new  endowment. 
People  are  what  they  are  born  as  regards  natural  gifts; 
and  education  will  not  beat  it  out  of  them.  Besides, 
the  newcomers  object  to  having  their  birth-gifts  beaten 
out  of  them,  to  being  born  again.  They  do  not  want 
to  be  assimilated,  do  not  want  to  become  American. 
They  want  our  gold ;  that  is  all.  We  shall  not  change 
their  nature  nor  their  character  to  any  marked  degree. 
The  camel  that  was  allowed  to  put  his  head  under  the 
Arab's  tent  did  not  turn  into  an  Arab;  but  he  con- 
tinued to  occupy  the  tent  to  the  owner's  undoing. 

But  better  than  any  argument  or  theory  about  this 


44  THE  MONEY  GOD 

class  of  immigration  is  the  experience  we  have  had 
with  it.  The  Pacific  coast  has  been  heard  from  about 
the  inacceptable  Asiatic  in  no  uncertain  terms.  Some 
academic  people  in  the  Eastern  States  have  spoken  of 
the  feeling  against  Asiatic  immigration  as  "a  mere 
prejudice";  but  they  list  not  whereof  they  speak.  The 
,  Californian  knows  that  the  Oriental  is  diametrically 
opposed  to  Western  institutions;  there  is,  and  can  be, 
no  common  ground  of  union,  no  brotherhood.  The 
people  who  live  in  the  coal  regions  could,  if  they  would, 
tell  somewhat  concerning  the  undesirability  of  the 
hordes  of  Lithuanians,  Poles,  and  Slovaks  who  work  in 
the  mines.  They  keep  the  community  in  a  state  of 
anxiety  in  times  of  peace,  and  in  a  state  of  terror  in 
times  of  strike.  Their  value  is  that  of  dynamite,  and 
they  are  always,  more  or  less,  "dangerous."  That  they 
will  ever  make  good  citizens  is  an  idea  that  few  have 
the  hardihood  to  entertain.  Again,  the  Atlantic  coast 
cities  have  had  an  all-sufficient  experience  with  the 
Sicilian,  the  Armenian,  and  the  Jew.  With  750,000 
Hebrews  in  New  York  City,1  and  enough  Sicilians  to 
keep  the  police  on  the  alert  from  dawn  to  dawn,  there 
is  little  use  of  talking  about  absorption  and  assimila- 
tion. Indigestion  and  nausea  are  more  appropriate 
because  more  truthful  terms. 

1  According  to  the  Jewish  Year-Book,  there  are  more 
Jews  in  New  York  City  than  in  Vienna,  Berlin,  London  and 
Jerusalem  put  together.  It  is  the  greatest  hive  of  Jews  in 
the  world,  there  being  over  a  million  within  twenty  miles  of 
the  City  Hall. 


THE  IMMIGRANT  45 

As  for  the  experiences  of  the  smaller  cities  along  the 
Eastern  coast,  perhaps  I  may  be  allowed  to  recite  that 
of  a  town  under  my  immediate  observation.  The  city 

of  B is  one  of  the  older  towns  near  New  York  and, 

up  to  a  few  years  ago,  was  in  possession  of  a  somewhat 
staid  but  very  respectable  population  of  about  twenty 
thousand  people.  It  was  not  what  is  called  a  "lively" 
town  until  the  coming  of  the  trolley.  With  that  there 
came  an  invasion  of  foreigners  collectively  known 
as  "Hungarians" — something  of  a  libel,  by  the  way, 
on  a  spirited  and  brave  people.  The  newcomers,  vari- 
ously estimated  as  from  three  to  six  thousand  in  num- 
bers, were  a  mixed  horde,  coming  originally  from  South- 
ern Europe,  east  of  the  Adriatic,  and  arriving  in  B 

as  a  part  of  the  immediate  overflow  from  Greater  New 
York.  They  did  not  come  all  at  once,  but  in  recurring 
waves  which  continued,  still  continue,  to  beat  upon  the 
town.  Each  wave  as  it  came  in  naturally  found  its 
level  in  the  lower  or  slum  portions  of  the  city,  finally 
settling  in  the  tenement-house  districts.  There, 
crowded  in  rooms  by  the  dozen,  and  sleeping,  eating, 
living  in  a  barbaric,  unsanitary,  and  unhygienic  way, 
these  people  soon  proved  to  be  something  of  a  public 
nuisance,  as  well  as  a  menace  to  the  public  health. 
Thanks  to  employment  readily  obtained  in  the  factories 
of  the  town,  men  and  women  alike  were  able  to  get  de- 
cent wages;  but  there  has  resulted  from  this  no  pro- 
portionate decent  living  on  the  part  of  the  invaders. 
They  still  swarm  like  rats  in  crowded  quarters,  and 


46  THE  MONEY  GOD 

raise  their  small  children  in  the  gutter.  More  recently 
some  shrewd  money-makers  have  discovered  that 
houses,  rentable  at  about  ten  dollars  a  month,  would 
be  acceptable  to  the  "Hungarians,"  and  so  the  city  is 
now  witnessing  the  blotching  of  its  streets  with  rows  of 
hideous  little  brick  structures,  all  built  alike  and  all 
mean  and  sordid-looking  even  before  occupancy. 

That  the  "Hungarians"  are  reasonably  happy  in 
their  quarters  is  probable;  but  what  about  the  city, 
county,  and  state  upon  which  they  are  quartered? 
What  benefit  are  they  to  the  community  in  which  they 
live  ?  They  do  not  speak  English,  they  know  nothing 
of  our  laws,  manners  or  customs,  they  own  to  no  al- 
legiance, assume  no  responsibility,  perform  no  public 
service,  pay  no  taxes.  To  educate  their  children  the 
public  schools  have  been  doubled,  to  keep  them  amused 
the  saloons,  dance  halls,  and  peep-shows  have  been  in- 
creased, to  hold  them  within  the  law  the  courts  have 
had  to  work  overtime.  On  week  days  they  do  what  they 
can  to  Utter  the  streets  with  all  kinds  of  refuse;  on  Sun- 
days they  do  what  they  can  to  harry  the  outlying  coun- 
try. The  men  go  forth  with  guns  to  kill  every  sort  of 
bird  or  beast  they  may  meet  with;  and  the  women 
tear  down  and  carry  away  every  fruit,  flower,  and  shrub 
they  can  lay  hands  upon.  In  their  own  land,  of  course, 
they  would  not  venture  to  do  such  things,  but  this  being 
the  land  of  liberty,  they  think  they  may  do  as  they 
please.  And  apparently  they  think  aright. 

"But,"  says  the  economist,  "they  make  trade,  they 


THE  IMMIGRANT  47 

spend  money  in  the  stores  and  thus  help  the  whole 
community."  The  theory  is  better  than  the  practice. 
They  have  been  followed  to  B by  a  school  of  shark- 
like  Jews  who  have  set  up  shops  in  the  slums,  and  it  is 
from  the  Jews  that  they  buy  the  bare  necessaries  of  life. 
The  Jews  are  just  as  bad  as  the  "Hungarians,"  just  as 
undesirable.  They  are  all  of  them  intent  upon  getting 
money,  sending  it  back  to  Europe,  hoarding  it,  or 
slipping  away  with  it.  They  have  no  notion  whatever 
of  helping  the  country  while  helping  themselves.  They 
have  come  into  the  land  for  the  same  reason  that  a 
drove  of  cattle  breaks  into  a  clover  patch — to  get  the 
clover.  To  imagine  that  they  will  benefit  the  patch 
in  any  way  is  altogether  foolish. 

"But,"  interposes  the  economist,  "they  furnish 
sinews  for  the  factories,  mills  and  mines ;  we  need  their 
labor.  There  are  not  enough  people  in  the  country  to 
do  the  work.  Besides,  it  is  cheap  labor."  Precisely! 
We  are  now  drawing  nearer  to  the  moving  cause 
of  things — "getting  warmer,"  as  the  children  say. 
Cheap  labor  for  whom?  Why,  for  one  of  the  two 
parties  that  seem  to  have  everything  done  for  them  in 
this  country  of  ours.  This  time  it  is  Capital  that  wants 
to  make  "just  a  little  more  money."  It  can  be  made 
faster  by  employing  the  newly-arrived  immigrant  than 
the  native  American,  so  Capital  is  in  favor  of  immigra- 
tion. Labor,  of  course,  does  not  agree.  It  is  not  in 
favor  of  immigration;  but  Capital  and  Business  be- 
tween them  have  their  way  about  it.  They  even  have 


48  THE  MONEY  GOD 

apologists  who  sit  down  and  figure  out  for  us  that  the 
immigrant  is  a  better  bargain,  not  only  for  them  but 
for  the  country,  than  the  native-born,  because  the  latter 
requires  twenty-one  years  to  raise,  while  the  immigrant 
comes  in  already  "raised."  This  figuring  upon  human- 
ity and  the  cost  of  raising  it,  as  one  would  upon  pigs  or 
sheep,  is  once  more  noteworthy  in  passing,  because  it 
quite  reflects  the  spirit  of  the  times.  And  the  argument 
is  considered  excellent,  too,  from  the  commercial  stand- 
point. Of  course,  if  you  are  silly  enough  to  talk  about 
an  intellectual  or  an  ethical  point  of  view,  you  must  not 
be  surprised  if  Business  shrugs  its  shoulders  and  turns 
away. 

Finally,  there  is  the  complacent  person  of  small  ex- 
perience who  tells  us  that  "the  United  States  is  big 
enough  for  all,"  and  that  the  immigrant  is  needed  to 
"develop  the  country."  The  word  "develop"  has  a 
familiar  sound ;  and  those  of  us  who  have  seen  this  land 
smitten  hip  and  thigh  in  the  name  of  "development," 
for  the  past  forty  years,  know  very  well  what  it  means. 
There  is  no  necessity  of  inviting  the  immigrant  here  to 
help  on  the  destruction,  for  the  American  has  been  and 
is  sufficient  unto  himself  to  do  his  own  flaying.  The 
immigrant  accelerates  the  pace,  for  those  who  are  out 
at  the  elbows  are  always  more  destructive  than  anyone 
else;  but  he  is  not  to  be  unduly  blamed,  since  the 
native  set  him  the  example  and  pointed  the  way  to  the 
quarry.  We  shall  see  hereafter  who  is  primarily  re- 
sponsible for  the  wasting  of  our  forests,  mountains  and 


THE  IMMIGRANT  49 

prairies,  the  pollution  of  our  lakes  and  rivers,  and  the 
sowing  of  the  land  with  board  shanties,  wire  fences  and 
telegraph  poles.  The  immigrant  despoils,  defiles,  and 
makes  town  and  country  hideous  enough,  in  all  con- 
science; but  there  were  others  who  did  it  before  him — 
did  it  in  the  name  of  Business,  too. 

Are  we  right,  then,  in  supposing  that  the  ones  who 
chiefly  profit  by  the  immigrant  from  Southern  Europe 
and  Asia  are  the  capitalist  and  the  business  man — the 
mill-owner,  the  mine-owner,  the  contractor,  the  rail- 
way people?  It  would  seem  so.  The  farmer  does  not 
want  hun,  the  professional  and  clerical  classes  have  no 
use  for  him,  he  is  anathema  to  Labor,  organized  or  un- 
organized, he  is  persona  non  grata  to  the  ten  millions  of 
immigrants  already  arrived,  and  who  are  now  anxious 
enough  to  have  the  door  closed.  Who  wants  hun,  then, 
if  not  Capital  as  represented  by  the  owners  of  railways, 
mills  and  mines  ?  It  is  answered  that  Capital  does  not 
bring  the  immigrant  here;  that  it  is  forbidden  to  do  so 
by  the  Contract  Labor  law.  Quite  true;  and  yet 
equally  true  is  it  that  the  great  god  Capital  has  as  many 
avatars  as  Vishnu,  and  each  incarnation  may  be  ad- 
justed to  help,  if  not  reflect,  the  other.  It  is  not  the 
mine  owner,  nor  the  mill-owner,  nor  the  railway  that 
is  immediately  responsible  for  the  importation  of  the 
immigrant,  but  a  mutual  friend  and  customer  of  theirs, 
the  steamship  man. 

The  transatlantic  steamer  lines  find  that  the  carry- 
ing of  immigrants  at  ten  or  twenty  dollars  a  head  is 


50  THE  MONEY  GOD 

very  profitable;  so  they  have  their  agents  scattered 
through  Europe,  who  not  only  distribute  highly  colored 
and  misleading  literature  about  this  country,  but  use 
personal  solicitation1  to  induce  immigration.  They 
paint  gay  pictures  of  this  land  of  plenty,  and  tempt  the 
poor,  the  ignorant,  and  the  credulous  to  sell  their  small 
belongings  for  passage  money  and  start  for  America  on 
a  venture.  When  they  arrive  here  (after  being  penned 
like  pigs  in  the  steerage  for  two  weeks),  nine  out  of  ten 
of  them  are  without  means  to  keep  them  a  month,  some 
of  them  are  old  and  decrepit,  some  are  even  insane. 
These  latter  are  often  deported,  flung  back  upon  their 
native  land,  with  no  means  and  no  redress.  Of  course, 
the  steamship  companies  cannot  be  expected  to  have 
any  soul  about  such  misfortunes.  And,  of  course,  they 
have  no  care  whatever  about  the  land  to  which  they  are 
bringing  these  unfortunates.  At  ten  dollars  a  head  they 
would  fill  this  country  with  rattlesnakes  and  hyenas 
almost  as  quickly  as  with  Slovaks  and  Greeks.  There 
can  be  no  sentiment  about  such  things.  The  president 
of  any  one  of  the  steamship  companies  would  tell  you 
that  it  is  "purely  a  matter  of  business."  So  it  is;  but 
a  plain-spoken  person  would  call  it  very  disreputable 
business. 

The  unwillingness  of  legislators  to  do  anything  that 
will  hurt  Business  is  primarily  responsible  for  the  con- 
tinued coming  of  the  immigrant.  Congress  has  it 

1  This  is  forbidden  by  United  States  statute,  but  the  law 
has  always  been  a  dead  letter. 


THE  IMMIGRANT  51 

within  its  power  to  carry  out  the  ideals  and  traditions  of 
this  country,  to  continue  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  and  its 
domination  here,  to  continue  its  thrift  and  decency  and 
general  uprightness.  It  also  has  within  its  power,  by 
its  spirit  of  commercialism  or  indifference,  to  allow  the 
whole  genius  of  the  people  to  be  changed  by  inter- 
marriage, to  allow  a  mixed  and  mongrel  posterity  to 
follow  the  present  possessors,  to  allow  the  destruction 
of  the  family,  the  country,  and  the  government  by  the 
inevitable  friction  of  alien  and  uncongenial  elements. 
The  immigrant,  like  the  tariff,  ought  to  be  revised  or 
abolished ;  but  will  it  be  done  ?  Probably  not  at  present. 
So  long  as  Business  can  utilize  the  unskilled  labor  of 
one  Slovak,  Congress  will  admit  him,  and  allow  five 
Hebrews  or  Greeks,  whose  labor  no  one  can  utilize, 
to  come  in  with  him.  It  is  not  the  first  time  in  history 
that  a  nation  has  caught  at  the  spiggot  and  leaked  at 
the  bung-hole. 


CHAPTER  V 

EDUCATION   FOR  BUSINESS 

THE  American  idea  of  what  constitutes  success  is 
not  so  well  typified  in  what  the  parents  are  as  in  what 
they  hope  the  children  will  become.  The  older  people 
are  usually  frank  enough  to  admit  that  they  have  failed, 
but  the  new  generation  has  splendid  promise  in  its  eyes ; 
and  there  is  the  consoling  thought  that  it  will  succeed, 
that  it  will  win. 

Succeed  in  what?  What  is  it  that  the  average  Amer- 
ican cares  to  win?  Is  it  honor,  esteem,  the  love  of 
mankind?  Is  it  scholarship,  right  conduct,  virtuous 
living,  decent  dying?  Is  it  perhaps  the  happiness  of 
others,  the  welfare  of  the  state,  the  glory  of  country  and 
race?  There  are  those,  to  be  sure,  who  seek  such 
things.  Noble  ambitions,  thank  Heaven,  are  still  to 
be  found  among  us.  But  it  would  be  idle  to  con- 
tend that  the  few  who  aspire  to  the  stars,  were  more 
than  a  very  small  minority  of  our  people.  Every  one 
knows  that  success  with  the  great  masses  spells  money. 
It  is  money  that  the  new  generation  expects  to  win, 
and  it  is  money  that  the  parents  want  them  to  win. 

52 


EDUCATION  FOR  BUSINESS  53 

The  boy  will  make  it,  and  the  girl,  if  she  is  not  a 
goose,  will  marry  it.  They  will  get  it  in  one  way  or 
another. 

If  this  were  not  born  in  the  blood,  it  would  be  driven 
into  the  head  by  our  process  of  education.  For  what 
the  children  may  miss  at  home  is  made  up  to  them  in 
the  schools.  Twenty  per  cent,  of  the  present  population 
of  the  United  States  is  now  in  the  public  schools.  In 
1905  this  percentage  meant  something  like  sixteen 
million  children  of  eighteen  years  of  age  and  under. 
Many  of  these  school-children  are  presumably  not  old 
enough  to  select  their  own  studies;  but  public  opinion 
sees  to  it  that  the  popular  ideal  is  upheld  and  that  they 
are  taught  "practical  things."  The  old-fashioned 
notion  that  education  was  something  of  an  accomplish- 
ment, something  worth  having  for  its  own  sake,  seems 
to  have  almost  disappeared.  The  self-made  man, 
whose  name  is  legion,  rather  sneers  at  the  whole  thing. 
He  had  no  "book  learning"  and  yet  "succeeded,"  and 
if  his  children  are  to  have  it,  then  it  must  be  of  a  kind 
that  will  "pay."  What  is  education  good  for  if  it  does 
not  "pay"  ? 

It  is  not  surprising  under  such  pressure,  and  with 
"practical  men"  sitting  on  the  school  boards,  that  all 
language  should  become  a  moribund  study,  and  litera- 
ture and  history  should  be  shelved  for  stenography  or 
book-keeping  or  banking.  That  which  is  mere  "cult- 
ure" or  mental  training  is  not  now  desirable  when  com- 
pared with  that  which  will  lead  directly  to  pecuniary 


54  THE  MONEY  GOD 

reward.  So  year  by  year  the  older  studies  pass  away, 
giving  place  to  new,  until  at  last  we  have  manual  and 
industrial  training  in  the  public  schools  that  children 
may  learn  to  use  their  hands  and  be  able  to  fashion 
salable  things  almost  before  they  know  how  to  read  or 
write  or  cipher. 

It  is  the  same  tale  higher  up.  The  colleges  and 
universities  at  one  time  cultivated  the  humanities  for  the 
sheer  love  of  learning.  Their  primary  object  was  to 
make  the  scholar  in  the  exalted  sense  of  the  word. 
Learning  was  then  a  knowledge  of  principles,  not  mere 
useful  information  or  some  petty  trick  of  thought  or 
hand  whereby  money  was  to  be  made.  For  a  long 
time  the  technical  and  professional  schools  which  pre- 
pared for  an  occupation,  were  apart  from  the  university 
proper.  They  are  so  yet  in  measure;  but  more  and 
more  each  year  the  university  is  forgetting  its  traditions 
and  is  teaching  a  formula  of  gain — turning  out  money- 
makers, not  scholars. 

And  yet  there  is  still  something  to  be  said  for  the 
older  education,  still  something  of  abiding  worth  in  the 
classic  languages,  in  philosophy,  in  literature,  in  history, 
in  art.  They  contain,  perhaps,  no  facts  of  present-day 
importance,  nothing  that  could  be  turned  at  once  into 
wealth.  There  is,  for  instance,  no  pecuniary  value  at- 
taching to  the  facts  in  the  Iliad,  the  Divine  Comedy  or 
Faust.  Again  there  is  no  scientific  value  attaching 
to  the  histories  of  Herodotus  or  the  Meditations  of 
Marcus  Aurelius,  or  even  the  plays  of  Shakespeare. 


EDUCATION  FOR  BUSINESS  55 

As  for  the  arts  of  past  ages,  many  of  them  are  dead 
to  us  in  some  respects.  We  do  not  know,  for  in- 
stance, whether  the  "Venus  of  Milo"  is  a  Venus  or  a 
Victory,  we  are  entirely  at  sea  regarding  the  originals 
of  many  of  Rembrandt's  portraits,  and  the  religious 
significance  of  Italian  art,  what  it  meant  as  worship,  is 
now  practically  a  closed  book  to  us.  The  facts  of  all 
these  things,  the  histories  they  told,  the  practical  pur- 
pose of  their  original  creation,  have  perhaps  been  for- 
gotten, have  passed  away. 

Why,  then,  do  we  still  continue  to  study  them? 
Simply  and  solely  because  they  contain  the  imperish- 
able quality  of  style.  They  are  the  models  of  perfect 
taste  for  all  time,  they  exemplify  the  best  methods 
of  doing  things.  Titian's  method  of  painting  a  por- 
trait is  just  as  desirable  to-day  as  in  Venetian  times, 
but  there  is  not  a  man  living,  nor  has  there  been  for 
two  hundred  years,  that  can  approach  it.  The  tech- 
nique of  the  "Hermes"  or  the  Parthenon  "Fates" 
is,  in  its  modernity,  the  despair  of  the  modern  sculp- 
tor. It  has  never  been  equalled.  Just  so  with  the 
Odyssey  of  Homer  or  the  Natural  History  of  Pliny. 
There  is  no  epic  poet  or  novelist  to  tell  the  tale  like 
Homer,  nor  naturalist  to  write  in  the  style  of  Pliny  Of 
course,  Pliny's  science  is  all  false  as  Homer's  tale  is  all 
fiction;  but  their  art  was  eternally  true,  their  method 
was  permanently  sound.  Theories  and  alleged  facts, 
and  even  what  is  called  scientific  history,  pass  on,  fade 
out,  and  are  forgotten : 


56  THE  MONEY  GOD 

"  Art  alone 
Enduring  lasts  to  us. 
The  bust  outlives  the  throne, 
The  coin,  Tiberius." 

Is  not  this  element  of  style  in  language,  literature,  and 
art,  which  teaches  not  the  thing  done  so  much  as  the 
manner  of  its  doing,  worthy  of  continued  study?  Is  it 
not  about  the  only  permanent  element  in  all  the  work  of 
the  world  thus  far  recorded  ?  And  in  teaching  us  taste 
and  method  in  the  present  day,  is  it  not  still  useful,  still 
serviceable  ? 

Our  modern  universities  in  their  trend  toward  prac- 
tical things,  are  teaching  scientific  facts,  or  hypothetical 
data,  which  are  assumed  to  be  the  same  thing.  Style  is 
something  that  is  taught  only  in  the  classical  course, 
which  though  still  alive  is  slowly  dying  out.  The 
science  course  is  the  more  popular  because  it  fits 
one  to  do  things  as  soon  as  the  student  leaves 
college.  The  facts  are  immediately  useful.  But 
for  how  long  do  the  facts  prove  serviceable?  How 
long  does  a  theory  in  geology  or  biology  or  chem- 
istry or  electricity  or  engineering  last  ?  After  ten  years, 
possibly  the  theorists  have  changed  everything,  re- 
versed their  own  conclusions,  and  are  going  the  other 
way.  This  is  called  "progress."  A  contradiction  or  a 
flat  inconsistency  is  always  proof-positive  of  the  pro- 
gressive mind. 

And  when  in  the  history  of  science  has  it  failed  to 


EDUCATION  FOR  BUSINESS  57 

prove  contradictory  and  inconsistent?  What  laws  of 
physics,  of  mechanics,  of  geology,  of  evolution  have 
emerged  unscathed  from  the  search-light  of  the  last 
twenty  years  ?  When  the  older  theories  are  quoted  by 
the  ignorant  laymen,  does  not  the  modern  scientist 
smile  and  say  something  about  our  having  "got  beyond 
that"  ?  One  might  be  justified  in  saying  that  the  teach- 
ings of  science  are  little  more  than  temporary  make- 
shifts; and  that  its  theories  are  merely  working  hy- 
potheses of  the  moment.  Certainly  it  would  seem  as 
though  the  element  of  permanency  had  no  part  in  it, 
and  the  quality  of  universality  was  not  within  its  keep- 
ing. 

However,  it  is  not  worth  while  pushing  this  contention 
too  hard  or  too  far.  There  is  no  quarrel  with  scientific 
or  practical  teaching  except  as  it  may  arrogate  to  itself 
undue  importance.  Its  permanent  value  is  perhaps 
factitious;  but  its  temporary  value  may  be  considerable. 
It  is  only  when  it  is  enlisted  entirely  in  the  service  of 
Business,  aiding  and  abetting,  even  stimulating  the 
money-getting  mania  of  the  day,  that  one  feels  like 
quarrelling  with  it.  For  the  American,  by  natural  in- 
heritance, has  keen  enough  instincts  for  the  dollar,  and 
needs  no  process  of  education  further  to  sharpen  his 
wits  and  shape  his  inclination.  It  seems  at  times  as 
though  an  education  in  style  that  taught  him  how  to 
use  money  after  it  was  gained  might  be  quite  as  useful 
as  the  education  in  science  that  teaches  him  how  to  gain 
it  in  the  first  place. 


58  THE  MONEY  GOD 

We  are  not  far  from  right  in  supposing  that  the 
scientific  and  "practical"  courses  in  the  colleges  are 
superseding  the  classical  or  "cultural"  courses.  It  is 
matter  of  common  knowledge  in  those  colleges  and  uni- 
versities where  both  classical  and  scientific  courses  are 
offered,  that  the  latter  is  the  more  popular,  the  one  that 
is  gathering  in  the  majority  of  the  students.  And, 
moreover,  by  the  system  of  elective  studies  now  in 
vogue  in  all  the  colleges,  it  is  possible  for  one  to  take  a 
classical  or  arts  course  and  yet,  strictly  speaking,  get 
very  little  of  either  the  arts  or  the  classics.  The 
elective  system  came  into  existence  really  as  a  means  of 
defeating  the  required  classical  courses.  By  it  a 
student  was  not  only  able  to  select  what  studies  it 
pleased  him  to  pursue,  but  to  select  those  that  ran  along 
parallel  lines  with  his  future  professional  work.  In 
other  words,  it  was  another  aid  toward  something 
"practical."  It  is  so  regarded  by  the  Student  at  the 
present  time;  and  that  is  why  it  is  so  popular  in  all  the 
colleges. 

To-day  the  electives  offered  in  the  ordinary  college  or 
university  are  something  astonishing.  The  student 
may  not  only  take  courses  in  economics,  biology,  miner- 
alogy, but  also  horticulture,  forestry,  sanitary  engineer- 
ing, naval  architecture.  There  are  whole  "schools" 
or  departments  devoted  to  such  practical  things  as 
electrical,  mechanical,  and  mining  engineering,  to 
chemistry,  architecture,  ceramics,  agriculture,  textile 
work.  These  technical  courses  are  avowedly  put  forth 


EDUCATION  FOR  BUSINESS  59 

according  to  the  United  States  Commissioner  of  Educa- 
tion "to  increase  the  productive  industries  of  a  State." 
In  addition  to  this  teaching  of  the  larger  universities, 
almost  every  State  in  the  Union  has  its  separate  college 
(supported  by  the  State  and  also  to  some  extent  by 
Congress),  established  "for  the  benefit  of  agriculture 
and  the  mechanic  arts."  In  these  Agricultural  Colleges 
there  were  enrolled  in  1905,  54,974  students;  and,  if  I 
read  the  Report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Education 
aright,  there  were  in  that  year  only  82,629  under- 
graduates, men  and  women  included,  in  all  the  classical 
or  liberal-arts  courses  in  all  the  colleges  of  the  country. 
But  still  more  practical  things,  with  immediate  money 
results  held  up  as  a  temptation,  are  offered  by  the 
Manual  and  Industrial  Training  Schools  throughout 
the  country.  They  have  sprung  up  in  amazing  num- 
bers within  the  last  ten  years,  and  self-made  million- 
aires have  endowed  them  lavishly,  not  to  say  extrava- 
gantly. Without  doubt  they  are  most  commendable 
institutions,  and,  like  the  Agricultural  Colleges,  do  a  vast 
amount  of  good  work.  I  would  not  be  understood  as 
undervaluing  the  sendees  of  any  of  these  educational 
institutions.  They  all  have  their  mission  and  make  for 
good.  But  my  primary  object  in  bringing  them  into 
line,  one  by  one,  is  to  suggest  how  much  more  popular 
than  any  other  is  that  good  one  that  makes  directly  for 
the  dollar.  I  wish  to  suggest  that  the  whole  stream  of 
education  is  being  gradually  turned  into  the  channels 
of  trade,  is  being  commercialized;  and  that  colleges 


60  THE  MONEY  GOD 

themselves,  with  all  their  tradition  of  culture,  learning 
and  "pure  science,"  are  fast  becoming  producers  of  the 
business  man  rather  than  the  scholar. 

To  return  to  our  Manual  and  Industrial  Training 
Schools,  there  were  in  1894,  according  to  the  Report  of 
the  Commissioner  of  Education,  only  fifteen  of  them 
in  the  country;  and  they  had  something  like  3,362 
pupils.  In  ten  years,  however,  the  number  of  schools 
had  jumped  to  one  hundred  and  six  with  43,197  pupils. 
This  is  certainly  a  tremendous  increase,  and  may  be 
considered  a  reflection  perhaps  of  the  great  material 
prosperity  that  visited  us  during  those  years.  It  was  a 
fitting  of  the  hand  to  the  work  immediately  before  it, 
a  preparation  for  mercantile  and  mechanical  pursuits. 

One  may  infer  as  much  regarding  the  large  enrolment 
of  pupils  in  the  Business  Colleges  of  the  country  of 
recent  years.  The  courses  of  study  they  offer  are  not 
long — in  some  cases  a  few  weeks,  in  most  cases  only  a 
few  months,  are  required  to  complete  them.  The 
average  college  devoted  to  business  is  emphatically 
a  get-ready-quick  concern.  It  turns  out  the  stenog- 
rapher, the  typewriter,  the  book-keeper,  the  clerk,  to 
meet  a  hurried  and  not  too-exacting  demand.  For 
more  than  fifty  years  they  have  been  in  existence  in  the 
United  States,  and  in  1904-05  there  were  4,936  different 
institutions  (colleges  and  universities  included)  where 
business  was  taught  to  262,798  pupils.  The  regular 
Business  Colleges  outside  of  the  universities  had  an 
enrolment  of  not  less  than  146,086  students. 


EDUCATION  FOR  BUSINESS  61 

This  three-months'  institution  and  its  patronage  in- 
dicates a  disposition  of  the  people;  but  is,  in  itself,  not 
very  important,  except  as  it  has  set  the  pace  for  the 
university.  It  has  produced  the  clerk,  but  not  the 
banker  or  the  full-fledged  merchant.  There  has  not 
been  enough  of  it  to  "fit  a  young  man  for  the  struggle 
of  commercial  life."  So  the  universities  have  taken  it 
up,  and,  being  highly  commended  therefore  by  banking 
associations,  seem  to  be  carrying  it  forward  with  suc- 
cess. The  Wharton  School  of  Finance  and  Economy 
of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  was  established  in 
1881.  The  object  of  it  was  to  furnish  "an  adequate 
education  in  the  principles  underlying  successful  busi- 
ness management,  and  in  the  principles  of  civil  govern- 
ment." The  course  now  extends  over  four  years,  and 
includes  banking,  accounting,  business  law  and  prac- 
tice, general  politics,  journalism,  sociology,  economics. 
The  success  of  this  school  soon  opened  the  doors  of 
other  institutions,  and  we  now  have  the  mercantile  and 
commercial  department  in  such  universities  as  Chicago 
and  Northwestern,  and  such  State  universities  as  those 
of  California,  Illinois,  Indiana,  Michigan,  New  York, 
Vermont,  Wisconsin  and  others. 

Here  are  not  only  straws,  but  whole  fields  of  grain 
that  show  which  way  the  wind  is  blowing.  The  appe- 
tite for  business  seems  to  grow  by  what  it  feeds  on,  and 
the  training  in  business  at  the  university  is  but  a  sharp- 
ening of  the  teeth  for  the  increased  appetite.  Was  it 
Mr.  Huxley  who  said  that  "sooner  or  later  everything 


62  THE  MONEY  GOD 

resolves  itself  into  a  matter  of  finance"  ?  Certainly 
with  us  there  is  a  trend,  not  only  toward  mercantile 
things,  but  a  growing  disposition  to  think  in  mercantile 
terms.  Even  our  great  professor  of  psychology,  Dr. 
James,  is  prone  to  talk  of  "the  cash  value"  of  a  certain 
quality  of  brain,  and  "does  it  pay"  is  heard  from  the 
pulpit  as  often  as  from  the  professor's  chair.  The 
plain  truth  is,  that  colleges,  universities,  and  education 
in  general,  are  fast  becoming  commercialized  in  accord- 
ance with  the  leaning  of  popular  thought.  Even  the 
professions  are  now  conducted  on  business  principles, 
and  with  a  lively  sense  of  the  pecuniary  rewards  to  be 
gained  from  them. 

The  representation  in  the  different  professions,  as 
regards  the  number  of  students  in  each,  is  given  below; 
the  figures  being  taken  from  the  Report  of  the  Commis- 
sioner of  Education  for  1905.  The  figures  for  law  are 
misleading  because  they  represent  only  the  students  in 
law  schools.  There  are  many  more  students  who  study 
in  offices  and  enter  the  profession  by  examination 
before  courts  than  through  the  universities.  A  conser- 
vative estimate  of  law  students  would  be  not  less  than 
30,000  in  the  year  1905: 

Theology,  number  of  students  in  1905 7,41 1 

Law  (Report  of  Commissioner  of  Education,  14,714)  30,000 

Medicine 25,835 

Dentistry 7,149 

Pharmacy 4,944 

Veterinary  Medicine 1,269 


EDUCATION  FOR  BUSINESS  63 

From  1888  to  1899  the  percentage  of  increase  in  each 
of  the  professions  was  as  follows :  * 

a  Theology 24  per  cent. 

Law       224  per  cent. 

Medicine 84  per  cent. 

Dentistry 380  per  cent. 

Pharmacy 31  per  cent. 

Veterinary  Medicine 17  per  cent. 

If  these  figures  are  compared  with  the  estimated 
average  salaries  paid  in  the  professions,  as  given  in 
Chapter  III  of  this  book,  it  will  be  found  that  the 
greatest  movement  is  toward  those  professions  that  pay 
the  most.  This  may  be  a  mere  coincidence,  but  it 
looks  very  like  an  ordinary  case  of  cause  and  effect. 
And  there  are  people,  a-plenty  and  to  spare,  who  can  see 
nothing  undesirable  in  it.  They  have  come  to  regard 
the  professions  as  merely  uncapitalized  industries,  occu- 
pations that  are  pursued  for  a  livelihood  only.  Perhaps 
they  are  right,  and  they  are  certainly  aligned  with  the 
modern  spirit;  but  there  are  a  few  old  fogies  who  do 
not  agree  with  them.  Let  us  see  if  there  is  not  some 
reason  for  dissent. 

1  Butler,  Education  in  the  United  States. 

*  This  is  probably  an  error,  or  else  the  candidates  for  the 
ministry  have  fallen  off  very  rapidly  in  the  last  half  dozen 
years.  Professor  Burton,  of  Chicago,  I  am  informed,  re- 
ported to  a  recent  meeting  of  the  Religious  Education  Society 
that  there  were  1,000  fewer  clergymen  to-day  than  ten  years 
ago. 


CHAPTER  VI 

COMMERCIALIZED  PROFESSIONS 

IT  is  not  to  be  supposed,  and  it  has  never  been  con- 
tended, that  those  in  professions  should  forswear  al> 
pecuniary  reward,  should  live  in  the  rarefied  air  of  the 
ideal,  and  take  no  thought  about  money  for  the  morrow. 
Such  a  contention  would  be  absurd.  The  professional 
man  is  entitled  to  his  fee  or  salary  just  as  the  laboring 
man  is  entitled  to  his  wage.  He  could  not  exist  without 
it.  But,  to  reverse  the  statement,  it  never  was  sup- 
posed, until  recently,  that  a  man  should  or  would  go 
into  a  profession  just  for  its  fees,  merely  for  the  money 
he  could  make  out  of  it.  Such  a  course  was  not  only 
considered  despicable  morally,  but  ill-advised  prac- 
tically. The  professions  were  callings  that  demanded 
consecration  to  high  aims,  to  noble  purposes,  to  self- 
denials;  and  any  one  who  thought  to  make  a  mere 
business  of  them  was  looked  at  askance  as  being  either 
a  fool  or  a  knave. 

But  if  we  have  not  "changed  ah  that,"  we  have  cer- 
tainly modified  it  in  these  recent  days.  The  old  ideas 
still  obtain  with  many.  There  are  teachers,  as  there 

64 


COMMERCIALIZED  PROFESSIONS  65 

are  preachers,  who  believe  themselves  "called"  to  their 
work,  people  who  think  little  of  pecuniary  reward,  who 
live  humbly  and  deny  themselves  pleasures  that  they 
may  help  others,  uplift  humanity,  support  the  state, 
and  build  for  the  glory  of  God.  And  they  have  some 
reward  in  this  life,  too,  though  it  be  not  in  money.  The 
community  at  large  respects  and  honors  them;  the 
community  sorrows  when  they  have  gone,  and  points 
with  pride  to  the  example  they  have  set,  the  good  that 
they  have  done.  Every  one  in  every  city  and  village  of 
the  land  has  known,  and  still  knows,  such  types,  for 
they  are  still  abundant.  But  I  wonder  if  he  does  not 
know,  also,  the  up-to-date  teacher  or  preacher  who  is 
perhaps  as  much  concerned  with  and  about  his  salary 
as  about  the  minds  or  the  souls  of  those  under  his 
guidance.  I  wonder  if  this  man  who  stickles  for  his 
immediate  reward  in  coin  of  standard  value,  and  more 
of  it  from  year  to  year,  is  not  a  growing  quantity  in  our 
country.  It  is  almost  incredible  that  one  should  go 
into  the  ministry,  or  even  a  professor's  chair,  for  the 
purpose  of  getting  "a  fat  salary";  but  is  there  not  a 
shrewd  suspicion  abroad  that  some  do  that  very  thing  ? 
It  is  not  a  thought  that  makes  one  any  the  happier  for 
the  thinking;  but  the  spirit  of  the  tunes  thrusts  it  upon 
us. 

Regarding  the  other  professions  we  can  be  more 
reasonably  certain.  The  increased  growth  in  the  dental 
and  medical  professions  suggests  that  there  is  some- 
thing besides  honor  and  glory  to  be  gained  from  them. 


66  THE  MONEY  GOD 

The  stories  told  of  the  fabulous  fees  demanded  and 
received  in  these  professions  (for  instance,  a  thousand 
dollars  for  filling  the  teeth  of  a  visiting  prince,  and  sev- 
eral hundreds  of  thousands  for  a  year  of  medical  attend- 
ance upon  a  Pittsburg  millionaire)  give  a  hint  of  some- 
thing more;  and  perhaps  attract  young  men  to  them. 
To  be  sure,  the  great  pecuniary  successes  in  either 
medicine  or  dentistry  are  almost  as  rare  as  in  literature; 
but  youth  never  doubts  but  that  it  is  to  be  the  shining 
exception,  and  excel  all  others.  That  there  is  a  grow- 
ing appreciation  of  the  value  of  money  in  these  profes- 
sions there  can  be  little  doubt;  and  the  modern  motto 
of  charges,  "All  that  the  traffic  will  bear"1  is  now  ap- 
plied almost  as  readily  in  a  physician's  or  a  dentist's 
"parlor"  as  in  a  freight-agent's  office.  This  practice  of 
charging  according  to  a  patient's  ability  to  pay  is  not 
only  a  settled  custom,  but  one  that  is  openly  defended. 
The  defence  is  that  "the  responsibility  is  so  much 
greater"  in  the  case  of  a  millionaire  than  a  mechanic. 
But  the  physician's  best  effort  is  expected  in  every 
case;  and  when  the  patient  dies,  what  earthly  good  does 
it  do  to  hold,  or  try  to  hold,  any  one  "responsible"? 
With  the  same  defence  a  barber  could  justify  himself 
in  charging  five  dollars  for  shaving  a  Vanderbilt,  or 
a  shoemaker  fifty  dollars  for  shoeing  an  Astor.  The 
truth  is,  the  laborer,  whether  physician  or  mechanic,  is 

1  The  phrase  has  a  technical  meaning  in  railway  trans- 
portation, but  it  has  been  distorted  by  common  usage  to 
mean  "all  that  one  can  be  made  to  pay." 


COMMERCIALIZED  PROFESSIONS  67 

entitled  to  his  wages,  and  no  more;  it  being  wholly  im- 
material and  irrelevant  who  hires  or  who  pays.  Mak- 
ing a  person  pay  according  to  his  ability  is  a  practice 
borrowed  from  highwaymen,  and  it  loses  little  of  its 
outrageous  quality  when  applied  by  the  legal  and  the 
medical  professions.  The  practice  was  adopted,  of 
course,  that  the  practitioner  should  get  more  money  out 
of  his  profession.  That  is  precisely  the  point  of  my 
illustration — the  growing  desire  for  money,  even  in  the 
professions. 

Aside  from  those  who  are  strictly  within  the  spheres 
of  their  professions,  there  has  been  a  great  business 
established  in  both  medicine  and  dentistry  by  the 
quacks  and  the  sharpers.  One  has  only  to  think  of  the 
enormous  trade  in  patent  medicines,  every  one  of  them 
more  or  less  of  a  swindle,  to  appreciate  what  good 
ground  for  tilling,  the  avaricious  and  the  sordid  con- 
sider the  profession  of  medicine.  In  dentistry  there  is 
the  same  story.  Painless  extraction  and  five-dollars-a- 
set  teeth  are  flaunted  in  letters  of  gold  from  the  second- 
story  windows  at  almost  every  street  corner,  by  prac- 
titioners who  are  trying  to  outbid  others  and  get  rich 
quick.  This  is  not  only  a  cheapening  of  the  profession 
to  a  business,  but  a  reduction  of  the  business  to  an 
auction-shop  grade. 

As  for  law,  it  is  fast  passing,  if  it  has  not  already 
passed,  into  a  mere  money-making  occupation.  The 
members  of  that  profession  admit  as  much.  To  be 
sure,  the  older  traditions  still  survive  there  as  in  the 


68  THE  MONEY  GOD 

ministry.  There  are  trials  in  court  where  silken  gowns 
are  worn,  and  learned  charges,  great  speeches,  brilliant 
sallies  of  wit  are  delivered.  The  etiquette  and  some- 
thing of  the  literature  of  the  law  are  still  in  evidence. 
But  every  one  knows  that  the  great  volume  of  "law 
practice"  is  done  now,  not  in  court,  but  in  offices,  be- 
hind closed  doors;  and  that  much  of  it  is  enlisted  in 
the  service  of  corporations.  The  lawyer  promoter  is 
abroad  in  the  profession,  and  the  stories  of  his  charges, 
or  demands,  outrank  those  of  the  medical  specialist. 
The  difference  between  a  firm  of  lawyers  of  this  type 
and  the  average  firm  of  Wall  Street  brokers  is  not  very 
apparent,  save  that  the  brokers  charge  a  regular  com- 
mission and  the  lawyers  charge  whatever  they  can  col- 
lect. 

If  there  were  any  doubt  about  the  commercializing 
of  law  and  medicine  it  might  be  dispelled  by  the  influx 
of  Jews  into  those  professions.  Of  course,  there  are 
various  grades  and  kinds  of  Jews.  Some  of  them  are 
very  respectable,  of  high  standing  socially  and  profes- 
sionally, excellent  lawyers  and  physicians.  Every  one 
respects  such  types  in  whatever  calling  they  are  found, 
for  they  are  among  our  best  citizens.  But  they  are 
the  exceptions.  When  there  is  a  marked  rush  of  many 
members  of  the  race  into  either  a  business  or  a  pro- 
fession it  is  very  difficult  to  convince  people  that  there 
is  not  some  direct  pecuniary  reason  for  it.  The  Jews, 
as  a  class  and  as  a  race,  have  not  spent  their  days  work- 
ing for  the  state  and  the  people.  Their  reputation 


COMMERCIALIZED  PROFESSIONS  69 

as  money-getters  is  too  well  established  to  be  easily 
shaken  off;  and  when  they  take  up  with  a  profession 
like  the  law,  there  is  the  suggestion  of  expected  re- 
wards in  hard  cash  rather  than  in  credited  glory. 

There  is  another  profession  that  the  Jew  has  helped 
to  turn  into  a  business,  though  before  him  it  had  been 
somewhat  degraded  by  true-enough  Americans.  I  re- 
fer to  journalism.  Time  was,  and  not  so  long  ago  at 
that,  when  an  editor  was  a  champion  of  the  people's 
rights,  a  moulder  of  public  opinion,  a  guide,  a  teacher, 
a  leader.  His  calling  was  as  distinctly  marked  and 
mapped  out  as  that  of  the  professor  or  the  clergyman; 
and  his  power  was  perhaps  greater  than  either  of  them. 
He  was  seldom  a  wealthy  man,  seldom  a  mere  mouth- 
piece of  the  counting-room  downstairs,  seldom  a  man 
editing  his  paper  in  the  interests  of  its  circulation.  He 
often  took  the  trust  reposed  in  him  most  seriously, 
shouldered  his  responsibilities  to  the  community,  worked 
hard  all  his  life,  and  died  in  his  editorial  chair,  a  man 
respected,  and  a  force  for  decency  and  righteousness. 

But  how  now  ?  What  responsibility  is  accepted  by 
the  editor  of  the  average  metropolitan  daily,  except 
the  obvious  duty  of  making  possible  a  large  return  on 
invested  capital?  What  sort  of  a  guide,  teacher,  and 
leader  is  to  be  found  at  the  editor's  desk  of  the  average 
yellow  journal,  daily  or  weekly?  The  proprietors, 
through  their  editors,  talk  glibly  to  Labor  of  its 
"rights" — meaning  money-rights;  and  they  denounce 
trusts,  corporations,  and  millionaires  as  octopuses  and 


70  THE  MONEY  GOD 

financial  buccaneers;  but  what  about  their  own 
trust  methods  and  the  millions  that  they  themselves 
have  amassed  ?  They  blow  hot  and  cold  with 
equal  facility  and,  ostensibly,  they  are  the  absolute 
servants  of  the  people,  defenders  of  the  rights  of  the 
poor  and  the  oppressed,  loud  criers  for  justice  and 
equality;  but  if  the  justice  they  demand  for  others  were 
meted  out  to  themselves  they  would  not  survive  its 
execution.  For  there  is  not  a  more  far-reaching  in- 
fluence for  evil  in  our  Western  civilization  than  the 
sensational  newspapers.  There  is  not  a  thing  that  is 
foolish  or  mendacious  or  impure  or  indecent  that  they 
will  not  do  or  say  to  increase  their  circulation.  They 
are  makers  of  money,  and  not  in  the  least  bit  scrupulous 
as  to  how  they  shall  make  it.  If  they  could  be  made  to 
consume  their  own  smoke,  or  swallow  their  own  poison, 
no  one  would  worry  himself  very  much  about  it;  but, 
unfortunately,  they  are  not  a  negative  but  a  positive 
evil.  All  the  churches  and  colleges  and  schools  in  the 
land  cannot  build  up  again  what  they  have  pulled  down. 
They  have  done  more  harm  to  common  decency  and 
common-sense  in  these  United  States  than  can  be  re- 
paired in  a  century  to  come. 

These  may  seem  "wild  and  whirring"  words,  but 
they  are  not  wild  enough.  Neither  are  they  at  all  new. 
They  have  been  repeated  many  times  and  with  good 
reason.  For  the  daily  newspaper — that  is,  the  average 
sensational  paper  of  which  we  have  enough  and  to 
spare  in  every  city — is  a  force  for  evil  from  its  very 


COMMERCIALIZED  PROFESSIONS  71 

start.    Let  us  state  it  economically  and  sociologically 
thus: 

1.  It  is  a  destroyer  of  the  forests  (and  they  are  fading 
like  snow  before  the  sun)   through  the  demand  for 
wood  pulp  in  making  paper.     The  press  is  voracious 
and  insatiate  in  this  demand,  and  it  uses  twice  as  much 
pulp  as  there  is  any  necessity  for  using  because  fully 
one  half  of  almost  every  newspaper  is  superfluous. 

2.  It  is  a  destroyer  of  good  labor,  since  there  is 
nothing  permanent  about  the  product,   nothing  that 
lasts  more  than  twenty-four  hours.     Like  the  flowers 
of  the  rich,  so  abundantly  berated  by  the  economists, 
the  newspaper  is  speedily  flung  into  the  ash  barrel — 
that  being  the  only  resemblance  between  it  and  flowers 
— and  the  daily  labor  of,  say,  two  thousand  men  is 
practically  lost. 

3.  It  is  a  destroyer  of  good  morals,  good  taste,  good 
sense,  and  good  language.     This  needs  no  argument. 
We  have  only  to  look  about  us  to  see  the  pernicious  ef- 
fect of  the  yellow-journal  habit  on  young  and  old  alike. 
As  a  corrupter  of  morals  and  manners  it  is  about  the 
most  active  agency  we  have  ever  known  in  this  country. 

4.  It  is  a  destroyer  of  decent  towns  because  most  of 
the  pestilential,  smoking,  smouldering  dump-heaps  that 
surround  our  cities  are  made  up  of  the  cast-away  news- 
paper;  and  most  of  the  unsightly  litters  along  fences, 
side-walks,  and  gutters  are  composed  of  newspaper 
refuse.     Even  in  its  death  it  manages  to  leave  a  stench 
in  the  nostrils  and  a  sore  in  the  eye. 


72  THE  MONEY  GOD 

Yes;  there  are  good  newspapers — a  great  many  of 
them;  but  they  do  not  reconcile  us  to  the  evil  done  by 
the  bad  ones ;  nor  do  they  invalidate  the  conclusion  that 
commercialism  has  the  profession  of  journalism  by  the 
throat.  The  first,  last,  and  only  reason  for  the  existence 
of  the  yellow  journal  is  that  it  pays.  The  love  of  money 
is  the  root  of  the  evil;  and  getting  it  by  hook  or  by 
crook  is  the  aim  and  purpose  of  every  one  of  the  colored 
irruptions.  Even  the  best  papers  of  the  day  are  not 
free  from  the  influence  of  the  counting-room.  They 
are  profitable  enterprises ;  and  in  a  way  it  is  a  satisfac- 
tion to  know  that  they  are,  to  know  that  decency  still 
pays  here  in  America;  but  the  deadly  fear  that  is  grow- 
ing at  the  heart  of  every  one  of  them  is  that  they  do 
not  pay  enough.  Year  by  year  the  more  conservative 
journals  change  their  tactics,  sell  out  to  more  radical 
owners,  or  drop  out  of  sight.  It  is  not  necessary  to  give 
specific  instances  of  this.  Every  newspaper  reader  in 
the  country  has  an  illustration  in  mind.  He  knows  and 
perhaps  deplores  the  great  change  that  has  taken  place 
because  he  feels  that  it  is  a  distinct  loosening  of  our 
mental  and  moral  grip. 

The  swift  degeneracy  of  the  press,  which  began  some 
years  ago,  was  not  without  its  effect  upon  our  periodical 
literature.  The  ten-cent  magazine  soon  came  into 
existence,  and  its  vaporizings  about  its  "enormous  cir- 
culation" (an  advertising  trick  borrowed  from  the 
newspapers)  quite  overset  the  equilibrium  of  the  more 
staid  publications.  Even  the  best  of  the  older  illus- 


COMMERCIALIZED  PROFESSIONS  73 

trated  magazines  wavered  and  trembled.  There  was  a 
hasty  overhauling  of  the  "table  of  contents,"  a  great 
rush  into  shorter,  more  numerous,  and  more  popular 
articles,  a  doubling  and  trebling  of  illustrations  and  a 
bid  for  attention  with  colored  covers  and  "catching" 
advertisements.  The  price  went  down,  the  short  story 
went  in,  and  the  serious  article  went  out.  All  of  which 
was  no  doubt  considered  by  the  magazine  publishers 
as  a  proper  concession  on  their  part  to  changing  public 
opinion,  a  keeping  abreast  of  the  times,  an  indication 
of  progress  and  liberality.  But  in  reality  the  magazine 
publishers  were  doing  then  just  what  the  newspaper 
publishers  did  before  them.  They  were  publishing 
down  to  the  level  of  the  great  masses,  bidding  for  more 
subscribers,  increased  circulation,  more  money. 

Similar  conditions  obtain  to-day,  though  most  of  the 
higher-priced  magazines  have  righted  themselves  and 
are  once  more  appealing  to  the  reading  as  well  as  the 
picture-looking  public.  They  still  take  an  interest  in 
their  circulation,  be  it  understood,  but  they  have  found 
out  that  a  small  circulation  among  the  influential  and 
moneyed  class  pays  better  than  a  large  circulation 
among  the  impecunious  masses.  It  is  not  the  price 
received  for  the  magazine  that  counts  the  most,  but  the 
price  that  may  be  charged  for  advertisements.  Natur- 
ally, advertisements  circulated  among  well-to-do  people 
will  bring  more  returns  to  the  advertisers  than  those 
sent  out  to  poor  people.  However,  we  need  not  pursue 
the  motives  of  the  publishers  into  the  last  ditch.  That 


74  THE  MONEY  GOD 

respectability  in  magazine  publishing  pays  is  again 
matter  for  congratulation,  not  reproach. 

Of  course,  the  ten-cent  magazines  continue  to 
flourish,  and  each  year  sees  a  new  crop  of  them  spring- 
ing up.  They  are  purely  commercial  ventures,  and  are 
not  very  different  from  the  newspapers  with  the  colored 
supplements,  save  that  they  are  issued  once  a  month  in- 
stead of  every  day.  And,  of  course,  the  magazine  with 
a  purpose  and  a  history  continues  to  exist.  There  is 
still  a  demand  for  serious  publications,  and  there  is  no 
suggestion  that  "literature"  has  been  totally  eliminated 
from  the  magazines.  There  is  a  suggestion,  however, 
that  magazine  publication  as  such  has  joined  in  the 
pursuit  of  the  dollar. 

This  is  quite  as  true,  and  perhaps  in  as  great  a  degree, 
of  book  publication.  There  are  volumes  accepted  and 
published  to-day,  by  the  best  of  publishers,  that  never 
would  have  stood  a  ghost  of  a  chance  of  seeing  the  light 
twenty  years  ago — volumes  published  solely  because 
they  would  sell.  Almost  anything  that  will  pay  can  find 
a  publisher;  and,  negatively,  almost  anything  that  will 
not  pay  will  fail  of  finding  a  publisher.  Abstractly  con- 
sidered there  is  little  to  find  fault  with  in  the  latter 
proposition.  No  one  can  expect  a  publisher  to  lose 
money  in  his  business.  Such  proceedings,  if  continued, 
would  soon  put  him  out  of  publishing  altogether  and 
into  bankruptcy.  As  a  business  man  he  has  to  study 
the  public  demand,  and  keep  an  eye  on  the  items  of 
profit  and  loss.  But  there  it  is  again.  The  picking 


COMMERCIALIZED  PROFESSIONS  75 

out  of  those  books  only  that  will  pay  is  a  commercializ- 
ing of  thought  which  cannot  have  other  than  a  depress- 
ing effect.  For  the  wish  of  the  publisher  for  a  paying 
book  is  almost  immediately  reflected  in  the  writer.  No 
author  wishes  his  publisher  to  lose  money  on  his  ac- 
count, and  so,  perhaps  unconsciously,  he  tries  to  write 
books  that  will  sell.  He  may  not  be  consumed  with  a 
desire  to  write  a  "best  seller"  among  the  novels;  he 
may  merely  wish  to  write,  in  a  more  popular  style,  a 
book  of  history  or  ethics  or  art;  but  in  the  end  he  com- 
promises with  his  ideal  and  weakens  his  work.  His 
"message,"  when  it  finally  emerges,  is  so  prettily  put 
to  please  the  public  that  its  force  is  gone.  Instead  of 
a  spirited  piece  of  writing  there  is  only  that  empty 
formula — a  popular  book. 

The  writer  of  to-day,  whether  author,  magazine- 
contributor  or  journalist,  almost  always  has  to  com- 
promise with  his  hope  or  expectation.  He  writes  not 
what  he  would,  but,  three  times  out  of  four,  what  an 
editor  or  publisher  suggests.  The  journalist  who  re- 
ceives an  order  to  write  up  a  certain  thing  is  usually  told 
what  to  say  and  how  to  say  it;  the  magazine  articles — 
three  out  of  four  again — are  usually  ordered  in  the 
same  way.  The  majority  of  present-day  writers  are 
producers  of  "copy."  They  write  to  order,  write  up 
or  down  to  illustrations,  alter  and  amend  their  work 
under  the  editorial  blue  pencil;  and  in  the  end  possibly 
have  the  mortification  of  seeing  their  article  in  print, 
minus  the  head  or  tail,  owing  to  the  exigencies  of  the 


76  THE  MONEY  GOD 

printer's  forms.  The  illustrator's  work  is  of  a  piece 
with  this.  His  art  is  a  series  of  compromises  from  be- 
ginning to  end,  and  in  the  final  result  the  work  that 
bears  his  name  may  come  out  a  series  of  ink  blotches 
thanks  to  the  hurried  processes  of  the  cylinder  press. 

It  is  proper  to  say  that  not  all  of  this  is  due  to  com- 
mercial requirements.  The  editor  thinks  he  is  actually 
producing  better  literature  by  his  supervision,  and 
three  times  out  of  four  he  thinks  aright.  As  for  the 
printer,  poor  devil!  he  is  probably  doing  the  best  he 
can;  and  he,  too,  has  his  compromises  and  limitations. 
But  when  all  is  said,  and  the  proper  allowances  are 
made,  there  is  the  desire  of  the  editor  and  the  publisher 
to  give  the  public  what  it  wants,  to  cater  to  its  tastes, 
to  increase  sales,  and  to  make  a  financial  success. 
That  desire  is  by  no  means  the  most  lofty,  nor  again  is 
it  the  most  despicable  of  human  aspirations;  but  it 
does  not  conduce  to  the  production  of  the  greatest 
literature,  nor  the  finest  quality  of  art.  Its  tendency  is 
to  turn  the  library  and  the  studio  into  a  counting-room, 
and  to  weigh  everything  by  the  dollar  standard. 

One  might  go  on  and  suggest  that  the  architect,  the 
painter,  the  sculptor,  the  singer,  the  musician,  the 
actor,  the  lecturer,  are  each  and  every  one  of  them 
trammelled  by  considerations  of  a  pecuniary  nature. 
The  sculptor  and  the  painter  are  perhaps  freer  than 
the  others,  and  do  more  starving  in  consequence 
thereof;  and  yet  we  all  know  people  in  both  of  those 
professions  who  have  made  shift  to  compromise  with 


COMMERCIALIZED  PROFESSIONS  77 

Mammon — have  been  forced  to  do  so.  The  architect 
can  no  more  escape  the  financial  aspect  of  his  building 
than  the  contractor  who  is  building  it;  nor  can  the 
actor  escape  the  workings  of  the  box-office  no  matter 
what  may  be  his  art.  It  is  almost  absurd  to  talk  about 
the  traditions  of  art  in  connection  with  the  theatre  of 
to-day.  In  New  York,  the  control  of  the  stage  has 
passed  into  the  hands  of  the  Jews,  and  every  one  can 
draw  his  own  conclusions  as  to  whether  it  is  controlled 
in  the  interests  of  art  or  money.  It  is  no  better 
elsewhere  in  the  country.  The  trail  of  the  dollar  is 
over  it  all. 

Nor  need  one  go  to  the  college  lecture-room  or  the 
laboratory  of  the  scientist  seeking  for  that  rare  article, 
"pure  science."  There  is  little  of  it  left;  but  in  its 
place  we  find  a  great  deal  of  applied  science.  Of 
course,  the  application  is  made  to  something  that  will 
pay.  If  an  Edison  or  a  Bell  or  a  Marconi  hits  upon  a 
happy  thought  it  is  quickly  incorporated,  capitalized, 
and  put  upon  the  market.  What  is  the  use  of  thinking 
up  something  new  if  there  is  no  money  to  be  made  out 
of  it?  What  a  foolish  person  was  M.  Cure",  who  dis- 
covered radium  and  handed  over  his  discovery  to  the 
world  without  getting  a  sou  for  it  I  Why,  he  might 
have  made  a  fortune  out  of  it  I  Quite  true.  Galileo 
might  have  patented  the  roundness  of  the  earth,  and 
Martin  Luther  should  have  copyrighted  the  Reforma- 
tion; but,  poor  wretches!  they  never  made  the  price  of 
a  pair  of  shoes  out  of  their  discoveries.  Instead  of 


78  THE  MONEY  GOD 

money  one  got  jailed,  and  the  other  was  excommuni- 
cated. And  still  there  are  people  weak-minded  enough 
to  think  that  they  left  the  world  a  little  better  than 
they  found  it,  though  they  left  it  no  money. 


CHAPTER  VII 
"DEVELOPING"  THE  COUNTRY 

THE  statement  will  probably  not  be  disputed  that 
what  we  have  of  material  wealth  has  been  taken  out  of 
the  land,  in  one  form  or  another.  It  is  an  elementary 
truth  that  the  earth  is  the  only  original  producer. 
Everything  of  value  in  our  country  has  been  mined, 
cut,  grown,  or  found  somewhere  or  somehow.  We 
may  transmute  or  transform  it  by  our  hands  or  our 
machinery,  but  for  the  materials  themselves  every- 
thing harks  back  to  the  land. 

And  such  a  land!  The  sun  never  shone  upon  a 
fairer,  a  richer,  a  more  productive  one.  By  virtue  of 
favorable  climate  and  an  abundant  rainfall  it  has  vast 
agricultural  areas  of  almost  unlimited  resources.  All 
kinds  of  produce  can  be  grown.  There  are  belts  that 
yield  cotton,  cane,  rice,  wheat,  corn,  oats;  there  are 
meadows  for  grass,  rye  and  barley,  uplands  for  fruits 
and  vines,  and  wide  plains  for  cattle,  horses  and  sheep. 
Out  of  the  mountains  come  gold,  silver,  copper,  iron; 
out  of  the  valleys  come  coal  and  oil.  For  more  than  a 
hundred  years  there  has  been  an  uninterrupted  cutting 
of  the  forests,  yet  there  is  still  timber;  and  for  a  longer 

79 


80  THE  MONEY  GOD 

time  a  harrying  of  the  fauna,  yet  there  is  still  game. 
It  has  been,  it  is  yet,  a  land  of  plenty,  and  all  its  paths 
have  dropped  fatness. 

This  was  our  inheritance  from  our  fathers.  Neither 
we  nor  they  made  it.  Strictly  speaking,  it  was  al- 
ready made,  and  about  all  that  we  did  originally  was 
to  enter  upon  it,  to  take  possession.  We  were  fortu- 
nate in  finding  it,  and  all  our  self-accredited  cleverness 
and  energy  would  have  availed  us  little  if  we  had  not 
chanced  upon  a  fair  domain.  That  we  improved  the 
inheritance  in  some  ways  is  true.  The  land  has  been 
broken  and  made  to  yield  crops.  Great  wealth  has 
come  out  of  this  tilling  of  the  soil,  and  the  wealth  has 
been  rightly  and  properly  gained.  No  one  finds  fault 
with  such  development  in  principle,  though  one  may 
flinch  over  some  of  the  methods.  In  the  main,  it  was 
not  only  necessary  but  highly  commendable  energy. 

Unfortunately,  the  forests,  the  mines,  the  waters,  the 
mountains,  and  everything  in  them  from  a  fish  to  a  fur- 
seal,  from  a  California  redwood  to  an  oil-well  or  a  coal- 
mine, have  been  "developed"  also;  which  is,  perhaps, 
not  so  altogether  praiseworthy.  For  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  developing  resources  off  the  face  of  the  earth 
to  our  present  gain  and  our  ultimate  loss.  It  is  a 
familiar  lesson  often  set  forth  in  fable.  One  can  get 
warm  by  burning  down  his  house,  but  it  has  never  been 
thought  a  wise  action;  and  a  people  may  get  rich  by 
flaying  their  land,  and  selling  off  its  natural  resources  to 
the  highest  bidders,  but  it  is  a  very  short-sighted  policy. 


"DEVELOPING"  THE  COUNTRY  81 

Now  of  these  two  kinds  of  development  let  us 
understand  that  one  of  them  is  unquestionably  right. 
Wherever  the  land  is  tilled,  and  by  man's  exertions  two 
blades  are  made  to  grow  where  none  was  before,  there 
is  value  made  and  money  properly  earned.  Farming, 
stock  growing,  horticulture,  and  all  the  varied  indus- 
tries growing  out  of  them,  constitute  production  by 
man's  exertion.  The  utilization  of  this  production  by 
the  consumption  of  the  increase,  a  restoration  to  the 
land  of  what  has  been  taken  from  it,  or  an  equivalent; 
in  short,  development  by  betterment  of  the  original 
"plant,"  are  not  only  rightful,  but  laudable  doings. 
Rightful,  too,  is  the  building  of  houses  and  cities,  the 
construction  of  roads,  bridges,  railways,  water-ways, 
harbors.  All  this  is  putting  back  something  of  value 
and  use  in  place  of  something  taken  away;  nay,  more, 
it  is  a  creation  and  a  conservation  of  wealth.  In  con- 
nection with  it  a  reasonable  use  of  timber,  minerals, 
stone,  oil,  coal,  is  not  only  proper  but  absolutely  neces- 
sary. No  one  is  foolish  enough  to  argue  that  no  tree 
shall  be  cut,  or  gas-well  tapped,  or  coal-mine  opened. 
A  rational  utilization — a  taking  of  what  is  needful — is 
not  an  act  open  to  criticism. 

It  is  a  pleasure  to  think,  and  to  say,  that  much  of 
this  right  development  has  been  carried  on  in  the 
United  States,  and  that  the  disposition  to  increase  it  is 
perhaps  growing  with  each  new  year.  Of  course,  some 
of  it  has  been  improperly  done,  and  the  destruction 
thereby  has  been  something  enormous.  The  settler, 


82  THE  MONEY  GOD 

about  whom  so  much  picturesque  nonsense  has  been 
written — the  settler  who  has  so  much  difficulty  in  re- 
maining settled  for  any  length  of  time — is  at  heart  a 
slasher  and  a  smasher  with  small  regard  for  the  country 
where  he  takes  up  a  claim.  He  usually  hacks  away  the 
timber,  fires  the  whole  mountain  side  to  make  better 
pasturage,  breaks  more  ground  than  he  can  till,  mud- 
dies up  all  the  streams,  and  gives  back  to  the  soil  a 
board  shanty  and  a  line  of  barbed-wire  fence.  Per- 
haps in  a  few  years  the  country  has  become  too  civ- 
ilized for  him,  and  he  moves  on  farther  West,  to 
repeat  the  performance,  leaving  the  ground  to  run  to 
weeds,  and  the  possession  of  the  board  shanty  to  the 
Eastern  mortgagee. 

Besides  this  type  there  are  plenty  of  make-believe 
settlers  scurrying  about  the  country,  taking  up  lands  on 
speculation;  and  plenty  of  companies  selling  farms  on 
a  map,  with  a  brass  band  accompaniment,  that  have 
no  idea  of  conserving  or  rightly  developing  the  land. 
The  Pacific  slope,  with  its  irrigation  schemes,  has  been 
the  stamping-ground  of  land  "boomers";  and  the 
most  conspicuous  example  of  their  methods  in  recent 
years  has  been  the  Salton  Sink  scheme  in  Southern 
California.  Owing  to  haste  and  bad  engineering  it 
turned  out  disastrously.  The  Colorado  River,  tapped 
for  irrigation  purposes,  got  beyond  their  control  and 
rushed  in  upon  the  Sink,  turning  it  into  a  great  sea. 
As  a  result  there  has  been  not  only  a  loss  of  land  to 
water,  but  complaint  from  New  Mexico  to  the  Pacific 


"DEVELOPING"  THE  COUNTRY  83 

Coast,  that  the  new  sea  has  changed  the  fine  dry  cli- 
mate of  all  the  bordering  states. 

Perhaps  this  kind  of  blundering  in  the  early  stages  of 
a  country's  development  is  inevitable.  Havoc  and 
spoliation  seem  always  to  have  been  the  forerunner  of 
civilization.  Every  frontiersman  of  whatever  name  or 
nature — pioneer,  settler,  woodsman,  miner  or  cowboy — 
is  lawless  and  reckless  in  his  expenditure  of  the  natural 
wealth.  He  takes  what  he  pleases,  cutting  out  the 
tenderloin  and  throwing  the  rest  of  the  carcass  away. 
As  for  preserving  anything  he  has  neither  the  tune  nor 
the  inclination.  He  is  a  Vandal,  and  tears  down  with 
no  thought  of  ever  building  up. 

Yet  his  depletion  of  the  natural  domain,  wanton 
though  it  may  be,  is  slight  compared  with  those  who 
follow  after  him.  Slash  as  he  will  with  axe  and  fire, 
nature  can  make  repairs  and  cover  up  his  depredations. 
But  what  about  the  depredations  of  the  organized 
bands,  the  promoters  and  business  men  who,  in  the 
name  of  "development,"  enter  with  the  determination 
to  wrench  everything  of  value  from  the  country  and  sell 
it  for  what  they  can  get  ?  What  about  their  wholesale 
flaying  of  the  land? 

It  is  well  to  recognize  the  fact  that  while  certain 
products  of  every  country  can  be  grown  again,  if  by  any 
chance  the  supply  runs  short,  there  are  other  products, 
called  natural  resources,  that  cannot  be  restored. 
Everything  in  agriculture  is  capable  of  reproduction; 
but  oil,  coal,  minerals,  large  timber,  are  laid  down  once 


84  THE  MONEY  GOD 

and  taken  up  only  once.  When  used  they  are  forever 
after  practically  useless.  Therefore  any  wasteful  em- 
ployment of  them  means  not  development,  but  de- 
struction. It  might  be  thought  that  a  recognition  of 
these  facts,  with  a  knowledge  that  the  supply  is  not  in- 
exhaustible, would  give  men  pause  in  their  use  of  such 
resources,  that  they  would  use  them  economically  and 
with  great  reserve.  But,  no.  Their  very  value  has 
been  their  undoing.  Their  spoliation  by  large  business 
concerns  has  been  going  on  persistently  for  years,  and 
in  some  fields  they  have  already  been  exploited  to 
exhaustion.  This  is  our  second  kind  of  "development" 
— the  kind  that  is  just  as  unquestionably  wrong  as  the 
first  kind  is  unquestionably  right. 

Perhaps  the  most  obvious  instance  of  a  looting  of 
national  wealth  is  to  be  found  in  our  forests.  They 
have  been  slashed  by  the  axe  and  eaten  out  by  fires 
until  little  of  them  is  left.  The  shooting  of  the  buffalo 
was  not  more  wanton,  nor  more  sordid,  than  the  anni- 
hilation of  the  white  pines.  They  vanished  almost 
before  we  knew  it,  so  fierce  was  the  onslaught.  Since 
then  all  the  conifers — the  yellow  pine,  and  the  redwood 
especially — with  the  hard  woods,  have  been  toppling 
and  falling  in  the  name  of  business  and  for  the  sake  of 
the  dollar.  Every  one  has  his  own  personal  experience 
to  narrate  concerning  the  felling  of  the  forests.  My 
own  would  only  heap  up  an  already  overwhelming 
testimony.  There  are  many  who  witnessed,  as  I  did, 
the  destruction  of  the  great  forests  of  Minnesota  and 


"DEVELOPING"  THE  COUNTRY  85 

Wisconsin,  and  since  then  they  have  seen  the  slashing 
going  on  in  the  Middle. and  New  England  States,  in 
Canada,  Georgia,  Montana,  California,  Oregon.  It  is 
the  same  story  everywhere.  Title  to  timber  lands  has 
fallen  into  private  hands,  oftentimes  by  methods  that 
will  not  bear  the  light  of  day;  and  nothing  will  answer 
but  the  trees  must  fall,  be  stripped  for  telegraph  poles 
or  railroad  ties,  be  sawed  up  into  flooring,  scantling,  and 
lath,  or  ground  into  pulp,  to  be  consumed  eventually 
by  some  settler,  corporation,  or  newspaper. 

Mr.  Gifford  Pinchot,  Chief  of  the  Forest  Service,  has 
recently  estimated  that  our  timber  supply  would  be 
exhausted  in  twenty  years.  He  thinks  something  can 
be  done  to  put  off  the  famine  a  few  years  by  reforesta- 
tion— the  planting  and  growing  of  new  forests ;  but  this 
is,  of  course,  a  very  slow  process,  with  a  long  cry  to 
maturity.  Something  has  been  done  in  the  last  dozen 
or  more  years  to  stop  the  havoc  by  the  creation  of 
national  parks — timber  reserves  under  government  con- 
trol. At  present  about  one-fifth  of  the  still-existing 
wooded  area  of  the  country  has  been  reserved,  all  of  it 
lying  west  of  the  Mississippi.  For  this  action  the  gov- 
ernment is  to  be  thanked,  but  there  is  still  the  regret 
that  it  did  not  come  sooner.  One  of  the  stable  doors 
has  finally  been  locked,  but  the  best  horses  had  already 
disappeared,  and  four-fifths  of  those  left  are  sure  to 
follow  the  outward  trail. 

There  are  severe  losses  attendant  upon  this  destruc- 
tion of  the  forests  quite  aside  from  the  prospective 


86  THE  MONEY  GOD 

scarcity  of  timber.  I  do  not  mean  moral  or  aesthetic 
losses,  for  they  are  felt  only  by  the  few;  but  material 
deficits  that  affect  every  one  alike.  There  is  a  lessening 
in  the  rainfall  with  the  passing  of  the  forests,  a  growth 
of  the  desert  land  area,  a  change  in  the  climate.  Still 
further,  there  is  a  deficiency  in  the  water  supply  of  the 
rivers  and  a  consequent  check  upon  navigation.  The 
Mississippi  is  a  fair  enough  illustration  of  this.  In  1868, 
when  the  great  forests  at  the  head-waters  of  the  river 
were  still  intact,  the  river  itself  was  a  true  "Father  of 
Waters,"  clear  as  a  mountain  lake,  and  deep  enough  for 
three-decker  steam-boats  to  run  up  as  far  as  St.  Paul. 
The  snows  that  fell  during  the  winter  in  the  dense  forests 
were  protected,  lying  under  the  trees,  from  the  warm 
spring  sun.  They  melted  away  only  by  slow  degrees, 
and  it  was  June  before  they  were  entirely  gone.  A 
medium  stage  of  water  in  the  tributary  streams  was 
thus  maintained  through  July  and  into  August.  The 
river  in  those  days  was  a  thing  of  beauty  as  well  as  a 
broad  highway. 

But  now  what?  The  forests  have  gone,  the  winter 
snows  fall  and  accumulate  on  the  exposed  areas,  and 
with  the  first  warm  sun  of  March,  they  perhaps  all  melt 
and  run  off  in  a  few  days.  Muddy  torrents  rush  down 
the  tributary  streams,  the  Mississippi  receives  them, 
swells  enormously,  expands  into  a  "spring  freshet" 
that  tears  and  wrenches  the  valley  from  St.  Paul  to 
New  Orleans,  drowning  out  and  destroying  villages  and 
towns  on  its  way  to  the  sea.  When  the  wild  flood  has 


"DEVELOPING"  THE  COUNTRY  87 

passed  there  is  a  collapse.  Receiving  no  constant  sup- 
plies from  the  tributaries,  the  river  dwindles  to  a  shallow 
stream.  That  is  substantially  its  condition  to-day.  The 
large  steam-boats  no  longer  come  and  go  upon  the 
upper  waters,  for  the  river  has  now  little  more  than 
two-thirds  the  water  it  had  in  1868.  And  the  Missis- 
sippi is  merely  one  of  the  many  streams  that  have  been 
thus  perverted.  It  is  not  the  exception. 

The  great  coadjutor  of  the  lumberman  in  destruction 
is  the  miner.  He  has  always  been  after  something 
down  deep,  and  has  never  cared  a  rap  about  what 
damage  he  inflicted  on  the  surface.  The  Forty-Niners 
in  California — the  Argonauts — are  illustrative  of  the 
whole  tribe.  They  turned  streams  and  rivers  from  their 
courses,  forcing  them  to  break  new  channels  through 
forests  and  down  valleys,  that  they  might  gather  gold  in 
the  drained  beds.  The  digging,  the  ransacking,  the  turn- 
ing things  awry  by  these  men  was  something  extraor- 
dinary, considering  the  fewness  of  their  numbers  and 
their  lack  of  machinery.  California  still  bears  the  scars 
of  their  invasion.  And  yet  these  were  children  in  their 
capacity  for  destruction  compared  with  the  organized 
bands  who  came  after  and  took  up  hydraulic  mining. 
With  streams  piped  down  from  the  mountains,  gaining 
terrific  force  by  their  fall,  the  new  miners  blew  hills  and 
valleys  and  the  sides  of  mountains  to  pieces  in  the 
search  for  gold.  Happily  this  kind  of  mining  was 
stopped  some  years  ago  by  State  statute;  yet  in  Cali- 
fornia and  Oregon  one  can  still  see  where  hundreds 


88  THE  MONEY  GOD 

and  hundreds  of  acres  have  been  ruined  by  it — the 
black  loam  of  the  surface  being  turned  under  the  clay 
and  gravel  by  the  hydraulic  blast.  In  those  fair  cut- 
throat days  any  camp  of  miners  would  have  blown  a 
whole  county  into  the  Pacific  Ocean  to  gain  fifty  dollars 
in  gold. 

Mining  under  any  circumstances  is  more  or  less  de- 
structive of  the  surrounding  country.  In  Arizona  they 
blast  the  top  off  a  mountain  as  cleanly  as  though  the 
forces  of  Co  lima  were  under  it;  and  in  Montana  and 
Colorado  they  do  substantially  the  same  thing.  Even 
the  coal-miners  have  a  way  of  scattering  the  black 
death  up  and  down  their  diggings.  The  sluicing  and 
drainage  of  the  mines  are  carried  into  the  lakes  and 
rivers,  the  fish  die,  vegetation  withers  along  the  streams, 
the  whole  country  side  looks  black  and  palsied.  And 
with  coal-mining  comes  up  again  the  terrific  consump- 
tion of  something  that  can  never  be  replaced.  It  is  esti- 
mated that  fifty  years  will  see  the  end  of  our  anthracite; 
but  that  gives  no  one  more  than  a  momentary  accelera- 
tion of  heart  action.  Every  engine  in  every  power  plant 
in  the  Eastern  country  is  burning  it  just  as  fast  and  furi- 
ously as  it  can.  Forced  draught,  shifts  of  firemen  to  run 
night  and  day,  picked  coal  for  greater  steam  are  at  work, 
as  though  the  actual  desire  were  to  see  how  much  can 
be  consumed  hi  a  given  time.  With  bituminous  coal 
the  figures  must  be  trebled  or  quadrupled.  One  ocean 
steamer  alone  (the  "  Mauretania")  swallows  a  thousand 
tons  a  day,  and  the  countless  furnaces  of  the  mills  and 


"DEVELOPING"  THE  COUNTRY  89 

factories  throughout  the  land  consume  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  three  hundred  millions  of  tons  a  year.  Surely 
at  such  a  rate  the  day  of  our  reckoning  is  not  far  off. 

And  how  long  is  our  iron  and  petroleum  to  last  ? 
Natural  gas,  under  the  mad  extravagance  of  its  use,  and 
the  imbecile  waste  of  it  in  mid-air,  soon  gave  out;  but 
what  reason  have  we  to  suppose  that  oil  will  continue 
to  flow  without  ceasing  forever  and  a  day  ?  As  for  iron, 
it  is  estimated  that  there  is  not  enough  to  last  for  more 
than  sixty  years  at  the  present  rate  of  consumption. 
What  is  to  be  done  by  those  who  come  after  us  no  one 
Knows  or  seems  to  care.  It  is  vaguely  suggested  that 
"they"  will  discover  something  to  take  the  place  of 
iron  before  that.  It  is  possible;  but  that  does  not 
make  our  conduct  any  wiser,  more  economic,  or  more 
thoughtful.  We  are  recklessly  consuming,  and  allow- 
ing others  to  consume  with  us,  what  can  never  be  re- 
placed. 

And  arguing  just  a  moment  from  the  government- 
ownership  standpoint  (and  we  may  all  come  to  it 
eventually,  willy-nilly),  why  should  a  controlling  cor- 
poration be  allowed  to  pipe  out  and  ship  around  the 
world  in  tank  steamers  a  natural  product  like  oil,  selling 
it  to  foreigners  wherever  possible  in  competition  with 
Russian  or  Indian  oils,  when  no  man  living  can  say  if 
we  shall  have  any  for  our  own  use  a  twelvemonth 
hence?  Why,  again,  should  enormous  steel  corpora- 
tions be  allowed  to  buy  up  and  mine  to  extinction  all  the 
iron  mines  of  the  land  that  the  present  generation  may 


90  THE  MONEY  GOD 

gain  a  fabulous  wealth  ?  Are  these  acts  different  from 
the  consumption  of  the  forests  over  which  every  coal, 
iron,  and  oil  man  holds  up  his  hands  in  horror?  Is 
not  this  substantially  a  killing  of  the  goose  that  lays  the 
golden  egg — an  unhallowed  eating,  drinking,  and 
merry-making  antecedent  to  the  morrow's  dying  ? 

Oh!  but  our  genius  for  "development"  must  be 
allowed  to  run  its  course  unhampered.  The  wheels  of 
progress  must  not  be  interfered  with,  nor  present  pros- 
perity frightened  from  its  perch.  The  quarrymen  who, 
until  recently  were  engaged  in  blowing  the  Palisades  to 
pieces  under  the  very  nose  of  New  York,  or  those  in- 
dividuals who  are  now  doing  their  best  to  wreck  the 
Highlands  of  the  Hudson,  are  "practical"  men;  and 
all  "practical"  men  argue  thus  and  so.  They  are  all 
"developing"  the  country,  making  "  business," furnish- 
ing employment  to  the  poor  down-trodden  laboring  man. 
The  skin-hunters  who  shot  the  buffaloes  and  sold  their 
hides  for  two  dollars  apiece,  the  men  who  are  now 
trying  to  exterminate  the  seal  herds  in  Alaska  and  the 
elk  and  moose  in  Canada,  with  the  people  in  the  North- 
west who  are  hoping  to  spear,  dynamite  or  otherwise 
kill  all  the  salmon  in  all  the  rivers  and  pack  them  into 
tin  cans,  are  making  "business"  and  furnishing  em- 
ployment in  the  same  way.  The  inhabitants  of  the 
Atlantic  States  are  now  beginning  to  feel  some  scar- 
city in  the  supply  of  what  is  politely  called  "sea- 
food." Fish  are  no  longer  so  abundant  as  they  were. 
Perhaps  that  is  because  some  years  ago  Business  with 


"DEVELOPING"  THE  COUNTRY  91 

a  tank  steamer  and  a  purse  net  caught  and  ground  up 
into  oil  the  small  food  fishes  in  the  near  Atlantic 
waters.  It  is  feared  that  there  will  be  a  scarcity  of 
supplies  in  other  fields  if  Business  is  allowed  to  go  on 
progressing  and  "developing"  as  it  pleases. 

Happily  this  fear  is  not  confined  alone  to  the  bosom 
of  the  college  "mollycoddle."  The  President  of  the 
United  States  has  recently  sent  out  a  letter  to  all  the 
governors  of  the  States,  calling  them  together  for  a 
conference  in  Washington.  The  reason  for  this  confer- 
ence had  better  be  given  in  Mr.  Roosevelt's  own  words : 

MY  DEAR  GOVERNOR:— The  natural  resources  of  the  terri- 
tory of  the  United  States  were  at  the  time  of  settlement  richer, 
more  varied  and  more  available  than  those  of  any  other  equal 
area  on  the  surface  of  the  earth.  The  development  of  the 
resources  has  given  us  for  more  than  a  century  a  rate  of  in- 
crease in  population  and  wealth  undreamed  of  by  the  men 
who  founded  our  Government  and  without  parallel  in  history. 
It  is  obvious  that  the  prosperity  which  we  now  enjoy  rests 
directly  upon  these  resources.  It  is  equally  obvious  that  the 
vigor  and  success  which  we  desire  and  foresee  for  this  nation 
in  the  future  must  have  this  as  its  ultimate  material  basis. 

In  view  of  these  evident  facts  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  time 
for  the  country  to  take  account  of  its  natural  resources  and  to 
inquire  how  long  they  are  likely  to  last.  We  are  prosperous 
now;  we  should  not  forget  that  it  will  be  just  as  important  to 
our  descendants  to  be  prosperous  in  their  time  as  it  is  to  us 
to  be  prosperous  in  our  time. 

Recently  I  expressed  the  opinion  that  there  is  no  other  ques- 
tion now  before  the  nation  of  equal  gravity  with  the  question 
of  the  conservation  of  our  natural  resources,  and  I  added  that 


92  THE  MONEY  GOD 

it  is  the  plain  duty  of  those  of  us  who  for  the  moment  are  re- 
sponsible to  make  inventory  of  the  natural  resources  which 
have  been  handed  down  to  us,  to  forecast  as  well  as  we  may 
the  needs  of  the  future,  and  so  to  handle  the  great  sources  of 
our  prosperity  as  not  to  destroy  in  advance  all  hope  of  the 
prosperity  of  our  descendants. 

It  is  evident  that  the  abundant  natural  resources  on  which 
the  welfare  of  this  nation  rests  are  becoming  depleted,  and  in 
not  a  few  cases  are  already  exhausted.  This  is  true  of  all 
portions  of  the  United  States;  it  is  especially  true  of  the 
longer  settled  communities  of  the  East.  The  gravity  of  the  sit- 
uation must,  I  believe,  appeal  with  especial  force  to  the  Gov- 
ernors of  the  States,  because  of  their  close  relations  to  the 
people  and  their  responsibility  for  the  welfare  of  their  com- 
munities. I  have  therefore  decided,  in  accordance  with  the 
suggestion  of  the  Inland  Waterways  Commission,  to  ask  the 
Governors  of  the  States  and  Territories  to  meet  at  the  White 
House  on  May  13,  14  and  15  to  confer  with  the  President  and 
with  each  other  upon  the  conservation  of  natural  resources.  — 

The  matters  to  be  considered  at  this  conference  are  not  con- 
fined to  any  region  or  group  of  States,  but  are  of  vital  concern 
to  the  nation  as  a  whole  and  to  all  the  people.  These  subjects 
include  the  use  and  conservation  of  the  mineral  resources,  the 
resources  of  the  land  and  the  resources  of  the  waters  in  every 
part  of  our  territory.  .  .  . 

Facts  which  I  cannot  gainsay  force  me  to  believe  that  the 
conservation  of  our  natural  resources  is  the  most  weighty 
question  now  before  the  people  of  the  United  States.  If  this 
is  so,  the  proposed  conference,  which  is  the  first  of  its  kind, 
will  be  among  the  most  important  gatherings  in  our  history 
in  its  effect  upon  the  welfare  of  all  our  people.  .  .  . 

It  remains  to  be  said  that  Mr.  Roosevelt's  letter  has 
met  with  little  comment  in  the  papers  and  practically 


"DEVELOPING"  THE  COUNTRY  93 

no  response  from  the  people.  The  "practical"  men  of 
the  United  States  want  no  nonsense  about  the  "con- 
servation of  our  natural  resources."  They  want  the 
resources — those  that  are  left.  And  it  is  not  at  all  un- 
likely that  they  will  get  them. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

WASTE 

THIS  matter  of  the  spoliation  of  the  country's  re- 
sources is  not  to  be  dismissed  with  a  few  pages  of 
casual  comment.  There  remains  something  further  to 
be  said.  The  destruction  is  more  appalling  in  its 
volume  than  has  been  suggested.  Everyone  knows,  in 
a  general  way,  that  our  great  national  iniquity  is  waste, 
but  few  appreciate  to  what  an  extent  it  is  carried.  The 
virtues  never  yet  flourished  in  times  of  prosperity;  and 
it  is  now  some  years  since  we  cultivated,  or  even  had  a 
speaking  acquaintance,  with  the  virtue  of  saving. 

The  use  of  resources  is,  with  us,  almost  always  ac- 
companied by  waste — the  throwing  away  of  unused 
portions.  It  is  this  extravagance  that  the  housekeeper 
quarrels  over,  the  economist  writes  against,  and  the 
elders  of  the  family  denounce  in  terms  of  warning. 
But  great  as  is  the  squandering  of  substance  in  con- 
sumption (and  I  shall  have  to  refer  to  it  again),  it  is  not 
so  outrageous  as  the  reckless  expenditure  that  goes 
along  with  original  production — the  getting  out,  or  the 
growing  of  the  materials  themselves.  To  be  specific,  let 
us  go  back  a  moment  to  the  destruction  of  the  forests. 

94 


WASTE  95 

If  we  take  the  word  of  the  government  experts  in  the 
Forestry  Department,  we  shall  believe  that  less  than 
fifty  per  cent,  of  the  timber  cut  down  is  carried  away 
or  made  any  use  of  whatever.  The  larger  portion  is 
allowed  to  rot  on  the  ground  or  be  consumed  by  forest 
fires.  This  sounds  almost  incredible,  but  it  is  truth, 
based  not  only  on  the  estimates  of  the  Forestry  Depart- 
ment but  on  the  experience  of  those  who  have  seen  the 
destruction  going  on  for  all  these  years.  Indeed,  the 
lumber  companies  themselves  cannot,  and  will  not, 
deny  it.  The  forests  have  been  "culled,"  not  cleanly 
cut  off.  The  lumberman  takes  only  the  choice  trees, 
and  only  the  choicest  portion  of  each  tree.  It  is  the 
old  trick  of  cutting  out  the  tenderloin  and  leaving  the 
rest  of  the  carcass  to  the  wolves. 

This  is  something  not  only  of  the  past  but  of  the 
present.  It  was  done  forty  years  ago  and  it  is  being 
done  to-day.1  Add  to  it  the  further  evil  of  breaking 
down  smaller  trees  by  the  careless  felling  of  the  large 
ones,  or  their  destruction  to  get  them  out  of  the  way  in 
felling,  and  we  have  waste  in  its  most  flagrant  form. 
The  smaller  trees,  the  discarded  tops,  the  high  stumps, 
even  the  "wind-fall"  timber,  could  all  be  worked  up 
into  merchantable  lumber,  or  at  least  used  for  skid 
poles,  road  building,  wood  fibres,  or  wood  distillation; 
but  it  is  destroyed  by  fire  or  allowed  to  decay.  The 

1  See  "Waste  in  Logging  Southern  Yellow  Pine,"  by  J. 
Girvin  Peters,  in  Year  Book  of  Department  of  Agriculture, 
1905. 


96  THE  MONEY  GOD 

lumberman  will  tell  you  that  "it  doesn't  pay  to  bother 
with  it" — by  which  he  means  that  it  is  not  a  get-rich- 
quick  enterprise  like  taking  away  only  the  picked  tim- 
ber from  a  very  large  area. 

This  improvidence  belongs  quite  as  much  to  the 
miner  as  to  the  lumberman.  Professor  Holmes  of  the 
United  States  Geological  Survey  has  recently  spoken  of 
"the  enormous  waste  of  the  fuel  product  of  the  country 
on  account  of  the  rejection  of  low-grade  fuel."  He 
has  declared  that  not  less  than  fifty  per  cent,  of  the 
natural  coal  supply  is  left  underground  and  buried 
under  refuse.  In  all  the  mines  a  great  quantity  of 
low-grade  fuel  is  rejected  and  only  the  high-grade  taken 
out.  In  one  instance,  given  by  Professor  Holmes,  in 
the  mining  of  a  twenty-five-foot  vein,  only  four  feet 
out  of  the  twenty-five  were  mined.  "Once  the  work 
on  a  mine  is  abandoned,  the  low-grade  coal  left  behind 
is  lost  permanently." 

Here  is  the  same  old  performance  again  of  cutting 
out  the  tenderloin.  The  coal-mining  States  are  all 
doing  it;  they  are  taking  out  only  coal  of  the  first 
quality  and  covering  up,  or  at  least  rendering  inaccessi- 
ble, the  lower  grades  which  could  be  profitably  used 
for  heat,  light,  and  power.  At  a  recent  meeting  of  the 
American  Society  of  Mechanical  Engineers,  Mr.  F.  E. 
Junge,  of  Berlin,  in  a  paper  on  "The  Rational  Utiliza- 
tion of  Low-Grade  Fuel,"  said  that  it  was  "  a  matter  of 
political  prudence  for  a  nation  to  exploit  the  low-grade 
fuel-materials  of  the  country,  such  as  peat,  dust  coals, 


WASTE  97 

and  refuse,  instead  of  wasting  anthracite  and  coke; 
and  to  reserve  the  latter  coals  for  more  profitable  and 
important  uses  in  the  metallurgical  and  other  indus- 
tries." Iron  and  steel,  for  instance,  depend  on  an- 
thracite, coke,  and  charcoal  for  their  production;  but 
it  is  not  necessary  that  every  gas  plant  or  power-house 
or  tramp  steamer  should  burn  the  higher  grades  of 
coal.  The  engines  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  con- 
sume 40,000  tons  of  high-grade  coal  a  day,  and  no 
doubt  better  results  in  running  a  fast  train  to  Chicago 
are  obtained  with  it;  but  how  long  is  the  supply  of 
high-grade  coal,  so  necessary  to  certain  industries,  to  last 
at  this  rate  of  consumption?  Everyone  knows  that 
sooner  or  later  we  shall  get  down  to  the  bones  of  the 
carcass ;  but  everyone  has  the  same  dull  thought  at  the 
back  of  his  head  that  it  will  not  come  in  his  time. 
"Let  posterity  wrestle  with  the  problem"  is  the  way 
the  subject  is  dismissed.  But  what  right  have  we  to 
impose  such  a  problem  on  posterity? 

The  method  of  mining  coal  is  typical  of  all  the  mining 
in  the  country.  The  ore  veins  are  worked  in  the  same 
way  as  the  coal  veins.  If  they  "pay" — that  is,  pay  large 
dividends  on  "watered"  stock — they  are  worked;  if  not, 
they  are  left  behind,  or  the  ore  is  thrown  out  on  the 
dumps,  or  used  to  fill  in  swamps,  or  in  some  way  practi- 
cally lost.  This  is  not  only  true  of  cheap  ores  like  iron, 
but  of  more  valuable  products,  like  zinc,  copper,  silver, 
and  even  gold.  In  placer-mining  many  of  the  old  sand 
and  gravel  dumps  have  recently  been  washed  over  at  a 


98  THE  MONEY  GOD 

profit,  so  great  was  the  waste  of  the  earlier  men.  But 
this  is  not  always  possible  nor  profitable  in  other  kinds 
of  mining.  Besides,  our  "practical"  men  have  found 
it  much  easier  to  skim  the  cream,  and  when  the  first 
skimming  is  exhausted,  to  start  in  upon  another  pan. 

This  way  of  "moving  on"  to  fresh  fields,  of  opening 
up  a  new  vein,  or  driving  a  new  oil  well,  is  so  very 
characteristic  of  American  "development"  that  we  can- 
not be  surprised  to  find  it  followed  in  almost  every 
exploitation  of  almost  every  natural  resource  we  pos- 
sess. It  is  not  only  coal  and  oil  and  ores  and  timber 
that  are  thus  wasted;  but  water  power,  water  for  irri- 
gation, the  rainfall,  and  even  the  soil  itself.  In  the 
matter  of  agriculture,  for  instance,  the  aggregate  of 
the  crops  in  America  has  been  so  large  that  we  have 
perhaps  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that  our  farm  meth- 
ods must  be  scientific  and  quite  the  best  in  the  world. 
But  the  very  opposite  is  the  truth.  Our  enormous 
crops  are  the  result  of  an  enormous  area  under  cultiva- 
tion, not  of  a  high  average  per  acre.  It  is  humiliating, 
for  instance,  to  read  in  the  last  Year  Book  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture  (1905)  that  our  average  yield  of 
wheat  for  ten  years,  1896-1905 — wheat,  which  is  one 
of  our  great  staples — is  only  13  bushels  to  the  acre,  while 
Great  Britain  averages  31.6  per  acre,  France  19.6, 
Hungary  17.5  and  Germany  27.2.  Even  in  Russia,  in 
all  her  barbaric  states,  where  we  imagine  that  anarchy, 
nihilism,  and  profound  ignorance  are  behind  the  plough 
as  well  as  the  throne,  there  is  an  average  yield  of  some- 


WASTE  99 

thing  over  10  bushels  to  the  acre.  A  similar  report  is 
to  be  made  regarding  oats,  barley,  rye.  Wherever  the 
same  kind  of  cereals  are  grown  and  comparison  with 
other  countries  is  possible,  the  United  States  registers 
a  low  average.  The  figures  are  not  given  for  potatoes, 
hay,  rice,  cotton,  sugar;  but  there  is  no  reason  to  think 
we  should  fare  better  with  them.  Our  smaller  "truck" 
fanners  and  the  growers  of  fruits  and  berries  have  just 
now  a  better  average  to  report;  but  these  will  soon 
report  an  "average  down"  unless  the  present  system  is 
changed.  Why  is  this?  And  what  is  "the  present 
system "  that  produces  such  poor  results  ? 

Baron  von  Liebig,  writing  in  1859,  accurately  enough 
summarized  our  system  of  farming  at  that  time.  He 
says:  *  "The  deplorable  effects  of  the  spoliation  system 
of  farming  are  nowhere  more  strikingly  evident  than  in 
America,  where  the  early  colonists  in  Canada,  in  the 
State  of  New  York,  in  Pennsylvania,  Virginia,  Mary- 
land, and  elsewhere,  found  tracts  of  land,  which  for 
many  years,  by  simply  ploughing  and  sowing,  yielded 
a  succession  of  abundant  wheat  and  tobacco  harvests; 
no  falling  off  in  the  weight  or  quality  of  the  crops  re- 
minded the  farmers  of  the  necessity  of  restoring  to  the 
land  the  constituents  of  the  soil  carried  away  in  the 
produce.  We  all  know  what  has  become  of  those 
fields.  In  less  than  two  generations,  though  originally 
so  teeming  with  fertility,  they  were  turned  into  deserts, 
and  in  many  districts  brought  to  a  state  of  such  abso- 

1  Liebig's  Modern  Agriculture,  p.  144,  New  York,  1861. 


100  THE  MONEY  GOD 

lute  exhaustion,  that  even  now,  after  having  lain  fallow 
more  than  a  hundred  years,  they  will  not  yield  a  re- 
munerative crop  of  a  cereal  plant." 

In  1857,  Mr.  Morrill  of  Vermont,  in  introducing  a 
bill  in  the  House  of  Representatives  giving  public  lands 
for  the  establishment  and  maintenance  of  Agricultural 
Colleges,  took  occasion  to  say  that  the  schools  were 
necessary  for  the  better  education  of  our  farmers,  who 
were  guilty  of  the  grossest  vandalism  in  the  manage- 
ment of  their  land.  He  showed  that  we  in  America 
were  far  behind  Europe  in  agriculture  in  general,  and 
more  especially  in  the  modern  scientific  system  of 
farming;  and  that  the  sad  results  were  becoming 
manifest  to  an  alarming  extent.  He  further  said  that 
the  general  method  of  husbandry  pursued  in  all  parts 
of  the  Union  was  so  bad  and  imperfect,  that  it  must 
necessarily,  year  after  year,  more  and  more  impoverish 
the  soil;  and  the  incessant  drain  on  the  natural  pro- 
ductive power  of  the  soil  amounted  simply  to  down- 
right robbery,  committed  by  individuals  at  the  expense 
of  the  national  property.1 

It  might  be  thought  that  since  1857  we  had  improved 
our  methods  of  agriculture,  and,  true  enough,  we  have 
in  some  sections  and  with  certain  products.  But  the 
old  improvident  system  is  still  existent.  The  yield  per 
acre  has  changed  but  little,  and  an  increase  in  one 
cereal  is  met  with  a  decrease  in  another,  so  that  the 
average  remains  about  the  same.  Why  ?  Because  the 

1  Ibid.,  p.  145. 


WASTE  101 

farmer  of  yesterday  is  substantially  the  farmer  of  to- 
day. The  present  generation  is  doing  what  its  an- 
cestors did  fifty  years  ago;  it  is  cropping  the  soil  and 
putting  practically  nothing  back  in  the  way  of  plant- 
food — that  is,  fertilizers  and  manures.  Worse  yet;  it 
is,  through  the  denudation  of  the  ground,  allowing  the 
richest  soils  to  be  washed  into  the  rivers  by  the  rains; 
•  and,  by  superfluous  irrigation,  it  is  still  further  drowning 
out  and  washing  away  the  very  life  of  the  land.  The 
Agricultural  Colleges  are  doing  what  they  can  to  repair 
the  damage  done  to  the  Eastern  farms;  but  they  have 
not  yet  stopped  the  destruction  that  is  going  on  at  this 
moment  among  the  Western  farms. 

For  be  it  understood  that  the  farmer  is  not  one  whit 
different  from  the  lumberman  and  the  miner  in  reck- 
lessness of  methods,  in  the  leaving  one  farm  for  an- 
other, in  taking  up  a  new  claim  and  working  only  the 
best-paying  part  of  it.  He  cropped  the  farms  of  the 
East  to  exhaustion,  and  when  they  no  longer  yielded  a 
sufficient  return,  he  quickly  transferred  himself  to  new 
farms  in  the  West,  where  he  is  now  engaged  in  the 
same  old  business  of  cropping  to  exhaustion.  We  have 
heard  much  of  the  "abandoned  farm"  of  recent  years, 
and  have  been  told  that  the  reason  of  the  abandonment 
was  that  the  old  folks  died  off  and  the  sons  refused  to 
stay  on  the  farm,  preferring  the  gayer  life  of  the  city. 
No  doubt  this  has  proved  true  in  many  cases;  but  the 
reason  why  the  abandoned  farm  itself  is  no  longer  a 
profitable  investment  must  be  apparent  to  everyone. 


102  THE  MONEY  GOD 

The  "pay  vein"  of  it  has  been  worked  out,  and  what 
remains  is  only  "low-grade  ore,"  to  be  left  on  the  dump 
heap  for  those  who  care  to  bother  with  it.  And  so 
we  have  once  more  an  illustration  of  the  way  the  tender- 
loin is  removed  and  a  suggestion  of  what  happens  to 
the  rest  of  the  carcass. 

One  can  find  illustrations  of  this  wanton  waste — this 
cutting  and  slashing  among  the  tall  timber — wherever 
one  chooses  to  look.  The  very  extent  of  our  oppor- 
tunities has  been  our  moral  undoing.  We  have  taken 
only  the  best,  and  trampled  down  everything  that  is 
merely  "good"  in  the  taking.  And  yet  this  is  not  the 
final  sum  of  our  transgressions.  We  have  practically 
destroyed  the  "good,"  but  what  have  we  done  with  the 
"best"  which  we  took  away?  Have  we  conserved  or 
properly  utilized,  or  even  decently  consumed,  this  ap- 
proximate fifty  per  cent.  ?  The  economists  tell  us  that 
"consumption  is  utilization,"  and  that  is  generally  true; 
but  there  may  be  a  consumption  by  fire  that  serves  no 
useful  purpose,  and  there  may  be  destruction  by  waste 
that  is  equally  useless. 

The  thousand  details  of  waste  in  the  arts  and  crafts, 
in  transportation,  in  commercial  handling,  are  obviously 
impossible  to  recite  at  this  tune.  Besides,  everyone 
knows  about  them  in  a  general  way  out  of  his  own  ex- 
perience. The  rejection  and  ultimate  destruction  of 
half-used  or  even  unused  materials  by  railways,  steam- 
boats, telegraph  and  telephone  companies,  trolley  lines, 
municipalities,  states,  the  general  government  itself, 


WASTE  103 

are  matters  of  more  or  less  common  knowledge.  Again, 
it  is  common  knowledge  that  every  railway,  or  other 
public  service  corporation,  suffers  in  its  property  at  the 
hands  of  its  patrons  because  of  that  malicious  spirit 
that  finds  expression  in  the  saying:  "The  company  is 
rich;  let  it  pay  for  it."  It  is  always  excuse  enough  with 
the  mob  for  the  breaking  and  wrecking  of  things  that 
they  are  "company"  things.  Besides  this,  a  large  com- 
pany suffers  again  by  the  extravagance  of  its  officers 
and  employees.  They  do  not  have  to  pay  for  repairs 
or  new  materials,  therefore  why  should  they  be  careful 
of  them  ?  The  waste  in  the  kitchen,  over  which  every 
housekeeper  wrings  her  hands  in  despair,  has  its  com- 
plement in  the  company's  office,  warehouse,  and  shop. 
In  manufacturing  there  are  now  some  very  shrewd 
economies  practised  in  certain  directions  and  some  un- 
intelligent extravagances  in  others ;  but  the  necessity  for 
utilizing  what  are  called  "waste  products"  is  being 
forced  upon  the  manufacturers  by  the  practices  and  the 
competition  of  foreign  companies.  All  sorts  of  time- 
saving  and  labor-saving  devices  have  been  in  existence 
with  us  for  years,  and  they  are  being  continually  bet- 
tered; but  it  was  (comparatively)  only  yesterday  that 
product-saving  devices  were  inaugurated.  Nowadays 
an  oil  or  steel  or  coke  corporation,  a  woollen  mill  or 
shoe  factory  or  meat-packing  company,  watches  every 
particle  of  refuse  and  utilizes  materials  to  the  utmost. 
It  is  perhaps  not  so  much  complete  consumption  as 
more  dollars  that  they  are  after,  but  thrift  of  that  kind 


104  THE  MONEY  GOD 

is  not  to  be  sneered  at  or  quarrelled  with;  it  is  to  be 
praised. 

The  distributors  of  manufactures — the  business  men 
and  middlemen,  both  wholesale  and  retail — are,  on  the 
contrary,  somewhat  more  reckless  in  their  squandering 
of  materials.  They  waste  good  products  and  charge  up 
the  waste  to  the  consumer — a  business  method  hallowed 
by  tradition,  if  not  by  inspiration.  For  instance,  it  is 
almost  impossible  to-day  to  buy  any  small  thing  of 
personal  or  household  need  that  does  not  come  in  some 
sort  of  a  prepared  package,  case,  or  cover,  to  be  thrown 
away  after  the  contents  have  been  used.  It  is  expected 
that  the  tin  of  peaches,  the  glass  of  pickles,  the  crockery 
of  cheese,  and  the  barrel  or  box  that  comes  with  almost 
everything,  will  go  by  way  of  the  ash-can  to  the  city 
dump  heaps.  It  seems  a  very  small  matter.  But  going 
on  continuously  in  twenty  million  families,  the  aggregate 
of  the  destruction  is  unthinkable.  And  be  it  remem- 
bered that  it  is  destruction,  and  nothing  else — unneces- 
sary destruction  at  that. 

But  into  this  matter  of  waste  in  small  consumption 
one  cannot  go.  It  is  a  vice  usually  charged  up  exclu- 
sively to  the  rich;  but  the  excesses  of  a  few  people 
in  spending  large  sums  of  money  for  flowers,  dress, 
jewels,  dinners,  balls,  have  given  a  false  impression. 
The  extravagance  of  the  rich  is  hardly  to  be  com- 
pared with  the  extravagance  of  the  poor,  for,  in  pro- 
portion, the  latter  is  much  the  greater.  It  is  the  waste 
of  the  poor  that  keeps  them  poor.  The  farmer  who 


WASTE  105 

leaves  his  plough  in  the  furrow  and  hangs  his  harness  on 
the  fence  for  the  winter;  the  mechanic  who  casts  away 
winter  clothing  in  the  spring,  and  throws  the  unused 
hah*  of  a  beefsteak  to  a  huge  dog  under  the  table;  the 
mill  hand  who  spends  his  week's  wages  in  a  saloon, 
and  the  clerk  who  mortgages  his  house  for  an  auto- 
mobile, have  few  prototypes  among  the  rich.  They  are 
the  most  recklessly  extravagant  of  all  our  population; 
and  they  are  the  ones  who  are  in  dire  want  the  first 
Saturday  night  after  the  mill  closes  down.  According 
to  the  tables  of  wages  received,  unionized  labor  gets 
more  on  an  average  than  the  professional  classes,  and 
yet  there  is  no  doubt  about  the  professional  classes 
living  better  and  having  more  for  the  inevitable  "rainy 
day."  This,  I  believe,  is  directly  due  to  the  spirit  of 
saving  with  the  one,  and  the  spirit  of  waste  with  the 
other. 

It  is  not  necessary,  however,  to  make  an  exception  of 
any  class.  A  general  indictment  of  all  the  American 
people  for  waste  and  extravagance  can  be  sustained. 
No  doubt  it  is  a  part  of  the  "development"  of  the 
country,  a  step  in  that  somewhat  problematical  "prog- 
ress" with  which  the  optimists  are  always  hopefully 
endowing  us.  The  optimist's  hope  is  a  very  comforting 
life-preserver,  and  we  should  hold  fast  to  it;  but  the 
very  fact  and  circumstance  of  its  existence  might  sug- 
gest that  perhaps  we  are  "at  sea"  and  in  some  danger. 
There  are  two  views  to  be  taken  even  of  hope. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  BUSINESS  TOWN 

THE  man  who  "develops"  our  natural  resources  to 
the  vanishing  point  has  no  notion  of  remaining  forever 
upon  the  immediate  scene  of  the  development.  He  and 
his  wife  and  children,  as  soon  as  they  have  made  that 
fortune,  expect  to  quit  work  and  go  to  live  in  the  city. 
The  final  goal  of  the  nomads  is  the  large  city  where 
money  can  be  properly  disbursed  and  unspeakable 
happiness  received  in  exchange  therefor.  Naturally, 
the  water-power,  or  the  mine,  or  the  forest,  or  the 
government  range  that  is  broken  into  to  provide  the 
necessary  million  is  not  an  object  of  their  everlasting 
solicitude.  It  is  but  a  temporary  abiding  place;  and  so 
what  matters  it  how  it  looks  or  what  its  condition.  It 
will  presently  be  behind  them.  They  will  not  see  it  in 
their  new  city  home. 

The  cities,  the  large  ones  in  particular,  are  being 
recruited  continually  from  the  country.  People  who 
have  made  money  honestly  and  otherwise,  people  who 
have  "struck  it  rich"  in  oil  or  copper  or  concession  or 
franchise — lucky  men,  business  men,  speculators, 
swindlers,  and  fools — are  flocking  into  the  cities  more 
106 


THE  BUSINESS  TOWN  107 

and  more  each  year.  It  is  said  that  the  city  draws  to 
itself  the  best  from  the  country;  it  might  be  said  that 
it  also  draws  to  itself  the  worst  from  the  country.  But 
taken  in  the  aggregate,  good  and  bad  together,  the 
numbers  that  come  in  from  year  to  year  are  formidable; 
and  the  money  they  bring  with  them  is  something 
astounding. 

They  add  not  only  to  the  population  but  to  the 
wealth,  the  energy,  the  life  of  the  city.  They  also  add 
to  its  bad  taste,  its  general  hideousness,  its  restless- 
ness, its  improvidence,  its  viciousness.  For  be  it  re- 
membered that  the  leopard  does  not  change  his 
spots  by  being  brought  out  of  the  jungle  and  put  into  a 
cage,  nor  does  the  man  who  has  "made  his  money  out 
West,"  in  some  mysterious  never-to-be-explained  man- 
ner, lose  his  business  methods,  his  lawlessness,  and  his 
vulgarity  the  moment  he  occupies  a  home  on  a  city 
avenue.  He  brings  to  town  all  his  native  characteris- 
tics plus  his  business  acquirements,  and  it  is  to  him 
and  his  fellows  that  we  may  ascribe  much  of  the  bizarre 
character  of  the  modern  city. 

Once  more,  let  us  understand  at  the  start  that  in  the 
building  of  the  city,  as  in  the  development  of  the  country, 
there  is  a  good  as  well  as  a  bad  side  to  be  considered. 
There  are  some  cities  in  the  United  States  that  we  are 
not  to  be  ashamed  of — cities  perhaps  like  Buffalo  or 
Hartford,  or  Harrisburg  or  Baltimore,  Denver  or  Los 
Angeles  or  Washington.  They  are  few,  as  yet,  to  be 
sure;  but  many  more  are  in  the  way  of  becoming 


108  THE  MONEY  GOD 

tasteful,  cleanly,  and  decent.  Since  the  Chicago  Fair 
much  public  spirit  has  been  awakened  and  municipal 
art  has  been  in  the  air.  The  arrangement  of  the  White 
City  seemed  to  impress  people  with  the  possibilities  of 
unity,  order,  and  beauty  in  more  permanent  materials; 
and  the  idea  of  the  city  being  an  attractive  and  a  livable 
place  as  well  as  a  place  in  which  to  do  business,  came 
into  existence.  And  it  has  borne  fruit.  Vast  groups  of 
buildings,  harmoniously  arranged,  have  been  put  up, 
in  Pittsburgh,  Washington,  West  Point,  Annapolis,  at 
Columbia,  Princeton  and  New  York  Universities,  at 
the  Universities  of  Pennsylvania,  Chicago,  and  Cali- 
fornia— to  mention  only  a  few.  Besides  these,  the  huge 
terminal  railway  stations  for  such  cities  as  New  York, 
Washington,  Chicago,  and  the  public  libraries,  capitols, 
court-houses,  post-offices  erected  in  many  towns,  have 
afforded  focal  points  of  interest,  points  of  departure  in 
the  planning  of  new  streets  and  buildings.  These,  in 
connection  with  park-ways,  open  spaces  for  sculpture, 
fountains,  and  various  civic  monuments,  are  all  the 
beginnings  of  a  liking  for  municipal  art,  of  a  better  and 
nobler  building  of  the  city. 

Moreover,  though  it  is  as  yet  a  wish  rather  than  a 
fulfilment,  it  is  a  satisfaction  to  know  that  extensive 
plans  have  been  drawn  for  the  revision  and  partial  re- 
construction of  such  large  cities  as  New  York,  Phila- 
delphia, Chicago,  St.  Louis,  Minneapolis,  St.  Paul, 
Harrisburg,  Cleveland,  Denver,  San  Francisco,  Los 
Angeles,  Boston,  Springfield,  Kansas  City,  Baltimore, 


THE  BUSINESS  TOWN  109 

Atlantic  City.  To  this  must  be  added  practical  results 
in  the  making  and  extension  of  parks  like  Fairmount 
Park,  Philadelphia,  Schenley  Park,  Pittsburgh,  Pros- 
pect Park,  Brooklyn.  And  with  the  park  idea  must 
be  associated  the  happy  thought  of  utilizing  the  natural 
beauty  of  water  effects  (as  in  the  Lake  Fronts  at  Chi- 
cago, Cleveland,  and  Buffalo,  the  Riverside  and  Lower 
Bay  drives  in  New  York),  and  the  general  projection  of 
extensive  boulevards  outward  from  the  cities  along  the 
rivers  and  the  hills. 

These  are  all  notable  and  noteworthy  signs  of  prog- 
ress. They  are  also  promises  of  what  is  to  come  in 
the  way  of  better  planning,  better  building,  better 
living  in  our  cities.  But  encouraging  as  such  progress 
is,  we  are  not  to  overestimate  its  present  extent  or  its 
possible  influence.  There  are  six  hundred  cities  in  the 
United  States  of  more  than  8,000  inhabitants  each,  and 
holding  collectively  about  thirty-three  per  cent,  of  the 
population  of  the  land.  Of  the  six  hundred  there  are 
hardly  more  than  six  that  have  seriously  taken  hold 
of  proper  city  building.  Ninety  per  cent,  of  the  cities 
just  "happened"  or  are  now  "happening."  They  usu- 
ally start  as  villages  in  a  casual  and  unpremeditated  way 
— those  along  the  water  being  born  of  a  wooden  dock 
where  boats  could  make  a  landing,  and  those  in  the 
interior  springing  up  along  a  cattle  trail  or  a  travelled 
highway,  or  about  a  country  post-office  or  near  a  water- 
fall. From  their  birth  to  their  death — and  cities  with 
us  have  been  known  to  die — their  expansion  is  dictated 


110  THE  MONEY  GOD 

by  the  expediency  of  the  moment,  combined  with  busi- 
ness utility  and  the  whim  of  individual  owners.  The 
last  thing  thought  of  in  connection  with  a  city's  growth 
is  a  definite  plan.  By  that  I  mean  that  a  plan  is  de- 
vised only  after  the  city  is  built,  and  it  then  consists 
largely  of  an  expensive  tearing  down  and  making  over 
of  what  has  already  been  done. 

In  the  initial  stage  of  the  town  building  there  are  no 
exits  or  entrances,  no  civic  or  neighborhood  centres, 
no  parks,  boulevards,  or  driveways.  Everything  is 
very  practical  and  for  immediate  use,  with  no  nonsense 
about  art  or  the  city  beautiful.  As  people  come  in  and 
the  town  begins  to  "boom,"  it  expands  by  pushing  out- 
ward streets  and  "blocks"  of  checker-board  pattern. 
It  seems  to  be  thought  quite  necessary  to  the  "block" 
city  that  the  ground  should  be  uniformly  level,  and 
sometimes  when  it  is  not  so  naturally  it  is  made  so 
artificially.  Any  stream  bed,  lake  bed,  valley,  or  marsh 
that  might  be  turned  to  account  as  so  much  natural 
beauty,  is  regarded  as  a  mere  hole  in  the  ground  and 
is  filled  up  with  refuse  from  the  city.  When  the  hol- 
low is  filled  and  levelled  over,  another  "  block,"  another 
street,  are  mapped  out,  and  the  district  is  open  to 
settlement. 

Whether  "filled-in"  or  not,  the  average  city  expands, 
more  or  less,  upon  its  own  dump  heaps.  The  refuse 
of  the  city  is  carted  to  the  outskirts  and  there  deposited, 
and  eventually  these  suburban  dumping  grounds  be- 
come incorporated  in  the  city  and  are  built  upon.  In 


THE  BUSINESS  TOWN  111 

the  order  of  their  settlement  the  squatter  follows  close 
upon  the  heels  of  the  ash-cart  man.  A  shanty  town 
springs  up;  then  after  a  time  it  is  destroyed  by  fire  or 
is  torn  down  to  make  way,  perhaps,  for  a  row  of  mean- 
looking  tenements.  With  the  tenements  come  the 
saloon,  the  rag-and-bottle  shop,  the  old-clothes  place, 
the  cheap  grocery  store.  Everything  is  built  for  the 
moment,  usually  without  sense  or  system,  and  without 
regard  for  the  comfort,  health,  or  use  of  others.  Wher- 
ever land  can  be  had  there  the  individual  erects  what  he 
pleases.  Of  course,  the  air  is  soon  foul,  the  water 
supply  contaminated,  the  streets  filthy,  the  back  yards 
unspeakably  feculent.  Thus  things  continue  until  the 
pressing  demand  of  Business  finally  pushes  tenements 
and  tenants  further  on,  and  proceeds  to  rebuild  the 
section  with  shops  or  factories.  In  the  end  Business 
has  its  way,  in  city  building  as  in  other  things,  and  it 
pushes  on  and  out  churches,  schools,  colleges,  and 
private  residences,  as  readily  and  as  remorselessly  as 
it  does  the  shanty  and  the  rag-shop. 

The  final  result  of  many  varied  and  sporadic  efforts  is 
"the  business  town."  It  is  usually  something  of  fear- 
ful and  wonderful  make — a  conglomeration  of  wood, 
brick,  stone,  and  steel,  in  forms  defiant  of  analysis.  Yet 
after  much  tinkering  and  political  jobbery,  it  is  not 
without  the  semblance  of  things  that  are  supposed  to 
be  accompaniments  of  municipal  dignity.  There  are 
the  pretentious  city  hall,  the  shop-made  government 
post-office,  the  irrepressible  public  library,  the  classic 


112  THE  MONEY  GOD 

court-house,  the  barbaric  school-house.  In  addition, 
there  are  avenues  paved  with  Belgian  blocks,  boule- 
vards where  the  weeds  are  still  growing,  parks  that  are 
decorated  with  flying  papers  and  empty  bottles,  with 
trolley-cars  along  the  streets,  iron  bridges  across  the 
rivers,  and  telegraph  poles  and  wires  everywhere. 
Reading  the  description  of  such  a  city,  written  and  sent 
out  by  its  Chamber  of  Commerce  as  advertising  matter, 
would  lead  one  to  think  the  place  a  small  reproduction 
of  Paris  or  Berlin,  but  the  reality  is  rather  disappoint- 
ing. Not  even  its  soldiers'  monument,  its  drinking 
fountain,  or  the  granite  statue  of  its  first  city  father 
can  elevate  it  to  the  plane  of  art.  It  is  not  beautiful; 
nay,  more,  it  is  not  comfortable  or  even  a  livable  place. 
It  is  a  shop  where  people  buy  and  sell,  and  all  its  plans 
and  purposes  centre  in  and  about  Business. 

The  larger  the  place  the  more  unlivable  it  is — New 
York  and  Chicago  being  about  the  most  impossible 
spots  for  the  home-lover  in  the  United  States.  In  New 
York  wherever  the  resident  goes  Business  chases  him 
with  a  store,  a  theatre,  a  hotel  or  a  trolley.  He  is 
forced  to  keep  moving.  The  Battery  (one  of  the  most 
attractive  spots  in  the  city)  was  long  ago  consecrated 
to  rapid  transit  and  immigrants;  Union  and  Madison 
Squares  are  built  up  with  hotels,  shops  and  offices; 
Fifth  Avenue  is  the  great  retailers'  head-quarters;  the 
rivers  are  given  over  to  ships  and  slums;  while  Staten 
Island,  the  most  beautiful  portion  of  the  greater  city, 
has  a  shore  line  of'factories.  The  would-be-resident  is 


THE  BUSINESS  TOWN  113 

put  to  his  wits  to  find  a  place  where  he  can  hold  fast 
temporarily.  Around  Central  Park,  on  the  upper  East 
Side,  along  the  Riverside  Drive,  he  still  has  isles  of 
refuge,  but  Business  will  eventually  engulf  them,  drown 
them  out. 

Of  course,  the  shop,  the  office,  and  the  factory  are 
useful  and  necessary  things.  But  why  have  them 
everywhere  ?  Is  the  world  so  small  that  a  repair  shop 
must  be  crowded  up  against  a  hospital  or  a  car-stable 
against  a  school-house  ?  And  why  a  girdle  of  factories 
about  the  fairest  island  in  the  finest  harbor  in  the 
world  ?  Why,  at  the  entrance  gate  of  the  richest  coun- 
try in  the  world  the  smoke  and  smell  of  iron,  oil,  chem- 
icals, and  fertilizers  ?  The  uses  of  an  ash-can  are  not 
to  be  denied,  but  there  is  no  sense  in  placing  it  in  the 
front  hallway  of  the  house. 

New  York  is  not  peculiar  in  this  respect.  All  the 
large  cities  are  more  or  less  alike;  and  wherever  you 
go  in  them  the  saloon,  for  example,  is  threatening  the 
church,  the  store  is  pushing  into  the  residence  district, 
and  the  factory  is  flinging  soot  in  the  face  of  the  college. 
All  the  accessory  annoyances  follow  after.  There  is 
the  whir  of  machinery,  the  shriek  of  whistles,  the  clang 
of  bells,  the  strident  grind  of  trolleys,  the  jar  of  trucks 
and  carts,  the  vast  uproar  of  the  city  for  which  Business 
is  so  largely  responsible. 

And  the  dirt!  It  is  not  in  the  street  and  the  gutter 
alone,  but  in  the  air,  and  against  the  blue  sky.  Pitts- 
burgh or  Cincinnati  or  Cleveland  or  St.  Louis  are 


114  THE  MONEY  GOD 

merely  the  obvious  illustrations  of  it.  All  the  cities 
are  more  or  less  foul,  and  all  of  them  have  those 
plague  spots,  the  tenements,  where  Crime  is  bred  and 
Disease  flourishes,  and  Misery, 

"  like  a  wounded  snake,  drags  its  slow  length  along." 

It  is  not  an  injustice  to  attribute  most  of  these  annoy- 
ances and  dangers  to  Business  and  its  methods.  In- 
deed, the  commercial  men  would  not  deny  it.  They 
rather  rejoice  in  the  thought  that  they  have  monopolized 
things,  that  they  are  in  the  saddle  and  masters  of  the 
situation.  Business  has  never  been  modest,  and  never 
by  any  chance  ashamed.  Look  at  its  boastful  ad- 
vertisements— or  rather  escape  looking  at  them  if  you 
can!  The  newspapers  and  magazines  are  mere  thin 
butterings  of  reading  matter  between  two  huge  slices 
of  business  announcements.  Again,  look  at  its  signs — 
or  escape  them  if  you  can !  Every  available  spot  where 
human  eyes  could  wander  seems  occupied  by  a  sign 
setting  forth  in  exaggerated  language  the  merits  of  a 
face  powder,  a  patent  razor,  or  an  alleged  Scotch 
whiskey.  Signs  in  wood  and  glass  and  metal,  signs  in 
gold,  silver,  and  brass,  signs  animate  and  inanimate 
jump  at  the  passer-by  like  a  mad  dog  or  fix  him  with  a 
maniacal  glitter  from  their  niche.  At  night  the  be- 
wilderment is  increased  by  the  ingenious  application  of 
electricity.  Lights  in  rows  make  up  huge  letters  ten 
feet  or  more  in  height,  designs  of  articles  for  sale  are 
outlined  with  lights,  and  colored  glasses  are  brought  in 


THE  BUSINESS  TOWN  115 

to  heighten  the  effect.  Then  there  is  the  additional 
ingenuity  of  moving,  dancing  lights  to  make  one 
dizzy.  A  table  water  in  a  huge  tumbler  continues  to 
effervesce  in  bubbles  of  light  all  night  long,  flashes  of 
lightning  point  the  way  to  some  one's  vaudeville  per- 
formance, or  against  the  sky  a  waving  banner  is  struck 
by  an  electric  search-light  to  call  your  attention  to  a 
new  brand  of  soap. 

It  does  not  lessen  the  annoyance  of  the  sign  in  the 
least  to  be  told  that  Paris  and  London  are  "just  as 
bad"  in  this  respect  as  New  York  or  Chicago.  Why, 
either  here  or  there,  should  one  have  some  shopkeeper's 
business  flung  in  his  face  every  time  he  steps  out  of  his 
house?  Why  should  people  be  allowed  to  flash  their 
wares  into  your  brain  with  a  sign  or  blare  them  into 
your  ear  with  a  band?  Has  the  passer-by  no  rights 
that  the  business  man  is  bound  to  respect?  It  was 
Ruskin  who  insisted  that  the  exterior  of  your  home  is 
not  private  property  in  the  sense  that  you  could  annoy 
your  neighbors  with  its  ugliness.  The  contention  might 
be  urged  with  greater  force  against  the  shop  and  its 
signs.  The  law  recognizes  nuisances  in  bad  smells, 
unwonted  noises,  intolerable  smoke,  and  upon  suffi- 
cient evidence,  the  courts  will  abate  them;  but  a  ner- 
vous person  may  be  driven  to  the  point  of  suicide  by 
hideous  moving  signs,  and  yet  have  no  redress.  The 
only  thing  the  self-respecting  or  nervous  can  do  is  to 
change  the  scene  by  moving  into  the  country. 

These  annoyances  of  the  city,  which  are  amusement 


116  THE  MONEY  GOD 

to  the  ignorant  and  the  idle,  are  fast  driving  the  better 
class  of  people  out  of  town.  The  soot  and  dust,  the 
glitter  and  flash,  the  clang  and  clatter,  with  the  inevit- 
able heart-disease  hurry — all  of  them  the  peculiar 
properties  of  modern  Business — make  the  town  un- 
bearable. So  out  in  the  suburbs  the  citizen  goes,  hotly 
pursued  by  the  newspapers,  the  ash-cart  man,  and  the 
— sign.  Everywhere  that  abominable  sign  to  shout  at 
you  about  pickles  or  cough-drops  or  corsets !  The  line 
of  railway  by  which  you  travel  has  a  row  of  huge  signs 
on  either  side  of  it,  where  you  see  all  sorts  of  hideous 
devices  in  color  which  are  calculated  to  impress  upon 
your  soft  head  the  excellence  of  some  one's  catsup  or 
malted  milk  or  cheap-as-dirt  clothing.  As  you  draw 
away  from  the  city  and  into  the  country  the  fences 
become  decorated  with  invitations  to  put  your  money 
into  certain  shoes;  the  farmers'  barns  tell  the  wonders 
of  oils  and  purgative  pills;  and  the  trees  have  signs 
nailed  into  them  with  poems,  not  about  apple  blossoms, 
as  in  Japan,  but  about  unrusting  fly-screens  and  soups 
in  cans. 

When  the  railway  is  left  behind  and  the  suburbanite 
is  on  his  own  premises,  under  his  own  elms  and  maples, 
is  he  completely  shut  out  and  away  from  all  things 
commercial  ?  Hardly.  The  country  trolley  rushes  by 
his  door,  and  into  the  night  he  hears  the  clang  of  its 
gong  and  the  grinding  of  its  wheels  on  a  curve.  And 
long  ago  the  telegraph  and  the  telephone  overtook  him, 
even  though  in  doing  so  they  found  it  necessary  to  cut 


THE  BUSINESS  TOWN  117 

the  tops  off  the  trees  along  the  country  roads  that 
interfered  with  their  wires.  Every  Sunday,  when  the 
suburbanite  goes  for  a  walk,  he  sees  those  long  rows  of 
ruined  trees,  he  studies  the  progress  of  the  sign,  the 
encroachment  of  the  factory,  the  increase  of  trolleys 
and  autos.  What  wonder  if  at  night  he  gets  out  an 
atlas  and  talks  sadly  to  himself  about  "trekking"  to 
Mexico  or  taking  a  voyage  around  the  Horn  for  his 
health!  Anything  to  get  away  from  what  is  neither 
savagery  nor  civilization,  but  the  barbarism  of  Business 
lying  in  between. 

All  this  is  a  familiar  tale  to  the  resident  in  or  near 
the  large  city.  If  one  cared  to  describe  the  smaller 
towns  in  the  Middle  or  Far  West  the  picture  would  not 
be  very  different.  They  are  a  little  more  careless,  a 
little  more  sordid — that  is  all.  In  all  of  them  the 
money  ideal  is  in  the  ascendant,  Business  is  placed 
upon  a  pedestal;  and  the  things  of  the  mind  and  the 
spirit  are  merely  to  suckle  fools  and  chronicle  small 
beer. 

It  is  these  cities  and  towns  throughout  the  land  that 
speak  for  our  civilization  and  enlightenment.  They 
and  the  country  without  are  the  net  result  of  our 
wealth — what  we  have  built  up  and  saved,  over  and 
above  expenditures.  Are  they  quite  worthy  of  the 
wealthiest  nation  on  earth?  We  are  proud  enough  of 
our  country's  climate,  resources,  and  natural  beauties; 
but  we  are  always  offering  apologies  about  our  youth- 
fulness  and  the  necessity  for  more  time  when  it  comes 


118  THE  MONEY  GOD 

to  a  question  of  what  we  have  done  to  improve  our 
birthright.  As  a  matter  of  fact  we  are  just  a  bit 
ashamed  of  the  little  we  have  done,  the  little  we  have 
given  back  to  the  land.  And  that  spirit  of  humiliation 
may  some  day  lead  us  on  to  better  things  and  nobler 
actions. 


CHAPTER  X 
THE  MILLIONAIRE,  TRUSTEE 

IT  may  be  accepted  as  a  fact  that  the  pursuit  of 
wealth  is  the  ruling  passion  of  our  people.  Every  one 
knows  it  through  a  vast  superfluity  of  daily  illustration. 
It  is  forced  upon  us  whichever  way  we  may  turn,  even 
if  we  are  not  smitten  by  the  madness  ourselves.  It 
pervades  all  classes,  and  has  been  with  us  for  many 
years.  And  yet  for  all  our  association  and  familiarity 
with  money  there  is  a  singular  confusion  of  thought 
regarding  it.  Those  who  are  without  it  have  exag- 
gerated ideas  of  its  value  and  what  it  will  do;  but  in- 
asmuch as  those  who  have  it  are  equally  mistaken  about 
its  nature  there  is  small  reason  for  sneering  at  any  one's 
ignorance.  Perhaps  we  had  better  go  back  to  an  ele- 
mentary understanding  of  it,  even  if  in  doing  so  we  have 
to  toss  all  the  accepted  economic  theories  out  of  the 
window. 

The  first  sharp  line  of  distinction  to  be  drawn  is  be- 
tween wealth  and  money.  This  is  necessary  because 
the  common  idea  is  that  they  are  synonymous  one  with 
the  other;  and  that  they  mean  cash  in  bank,  or  stocks 
and  bonds  in  a  deposit  vault.  Wealth,  of  course,  does 
119 


120  THE  MONEY  GOD 

not  lie  in  these  paper  bundles,  but  in  the  farm,  the  mine, 
the  mill,  the  railway,  the  water-power;  in  buildings, 
bridges,  viaducts,  subways;  in  the  residences  of  citi- 
zens, their  warehouses  and  stocks  of  goods,  their  ships 
and  docks  and  depots — all  of  them  things  of  use  and 
value,  or  of  earning  capacity.  Money  is  but  the  cer- 
tificate, the  token,  the  symbol  of  this  wealth  issued  to 
or  by  the  individual,  the  company,  the  municipality,  or 
the  government,  to  show  who  controls  or  commands 
it.  The  confusion  of  the  reality  with  its  sign  or  token 
was  to  have  been  expected.  Every  religion  has  furnished 
its  quota  of  adherents  who  have  worshipped  the  stone 
or  picture  itself  rather  than  the  deity  it  symbolized. 

Gold  (and  in  ratio,  silver)  is  both  wealth  and  money 
combined;  first,  because  it  has  specific  value  as  metal 
for  use  in  the  arts;  secondly,  because  it  is  actually  in 
circulation  as  money.  It  is  not  a  certificate  or  token 
of  value,  and  has  no  promise-to-pay  stamped  upon  it; 
on  the  contrary,  it  is  value  and  payment  in  one.  As  a 
commodity  and  as  a  money  used  in  exchange  it  is  thus 
quite  exceptional,  in  a  class  by  itself.  We  must  not, 
however,  allow  our  distinction  between  wealth  and 
money  to  be  disturbed  because  gold  is  used  sometimes 
as  one,  sometimes  as  the  other,  and  sometimes  as  both. 

We  now  come  to  a  second  proposition,  that  none  of 
these  things — neither  wealth,  money,  nor  gold — is  of 
any  value  whatever  unless  it  is  in  use.  Here  again  we 
meet  with  a  very  common  misunderstanding.  It  is 
actually  thought  by  some  people  that  the  millionaire 


THE  MILLIONAIRE,  TRUSTEE  121 

has  strong  boxes  filled  with  his  gold,  locked  up  in 
deposit  vaults;  and  the  more  ignorant  still  believe  that 
he  keeps  his  money  in  the  cellar  under  the  coal  heap. 
The  novelist's  miser  gloating  over  his  hoard  is  an  in- 
eradicable picture  in  the  mind  of  the  populace.  But 
every  one  knows  what  happens  to  the  miser  of  fiction. 
He  starves  to  death  because  he  will  not  use  any  of  his 
hoard.  And  that  is  what  would  happen  to  the  million- 
aire of  fact  if  he  had  all  his  wealth  in  gold  and  declined 
to  put  it,  or  any  money  certificates  of  it,  into  circulation. 
How,  then,  is  unused  gold  in  a  box  any  more  valuable 
than  undiscovered  gold  in  the  bosom  of  the  earth? 
Tons  of  minted  coin — the  finest  of  American  eagles  or 
British  sovereigns — would  be  worth  on  a  deserted 
island  no  more  than  so  many  tons  of  island  rock.  It 
must  be  in  use  to  have  value. 

This  is  equally  true  of  wealth  itself.  If  the  farm 
were  abandoned,  the  mill  shut  down,  the  mine  closed, 
the  warehouse  locked  and  barred,  the  ships  tied  up  at  the 
docks,  the  goods  left  unused,  what  would  be  the  value 
of  any  of  them?  The  finest  "plant"  of  the  largest 
trust  in  America,  if  marooned  at  the  North  Pole,  would 
be  quite  as  worthless  as  the  foundations  of  ice  beneath 
it ;  and  so  the  most  beautiful  of  our  cities,  if  untenanted 
and  unused,  would  be  of  no  more  value  than  the  pin- 
nacles of  the  neighboring  mountains.  The  general  in- 
ference is  unmistakable.  Unless  the  rich  man's 
wealth  and  money  are  being  used,  they  are  only  so  much 
rubbish  encumbering  the  earth. 


122  THE  MONEY  GOD 

Therefore,  I  cannot  at  all  agree  with  an  anonymous 
economist,  recently  writing  in  the  North  American 
Review,1  who  keeps  asking  in  substance,  the  question: 
"How  much  money  should  a  man  by  his  abilities  be 
allowed  to  withdraw  from  the  common  store  ?"  In  the 
first  place,  there  is  no  "common  store"  in  America — all 
money  being  in  the  possession  of  individuals  or  govern- 
ments; and,  in  the  second  place,  no  one  can  "with- 
draw" money  from  common  use  without  rendering  it 
useless.  As  regards  wealth  as  distinguished  from 
money,  every  man,  whether  rich  or  poor,  has  certain 
articles  of  property,  such  as  houses,  clothing,  furniture, 
which  may  fairly  enough  be  accounted  "withdrawn" 
in  the  sense  that  they  are  only  for  private  use.  These 
should  include  such  wealth  as  diamonds,  pictures,  and 
rugs  which  require  practically  no  expenditure  in  their 
daily  use;  but  not  horses,  autos,  yachts,  dinners  and 
balls  which  put  money  in  circulation  (foolishly,  if 
you  will)  as  a  necessity  of  their  existence.  We  shall 
see  anon  that  this  withdrawing  to  privacy  of  wealth  in 
pictures  and  gems  is  limited  both  in  extent  and  in  en- 
joyment; and  we  shall  also  see  that  the  rich  man's 
autos  and  dinners  are  of  limited  enjoyment  too.  A 
man  can  only  eat,  drink,  and  "live  up"  so  much; 
and  if  he  carries  the  indulgence  to  excess  he  soon 
arrives  at  the  point  where  he  can  do  none  of  these 
things.  But  let  us  get  back  to  our  general  proposi- 

i"An  Appeal  to  Millionaires,"  in  North  American  Review, 
June,  1906. 


THE  MILLIONAIRE,  TRUSTEE  123 

tion  that  neither  wealth  nor  money  is  of  value  unless 
used. 

If  the  millions  of  the  millionaire  require  use  to  make 
them  valuable,  then  the  next  proposition  follows  of 
itself.  The  millions  cannot  be  used  without  benefiting 
other  people  as  well  as  their  owner.  The  most  con- 
demned and  foolish  expenditures  of  the  rich,  those  for 
champagne  or  flowers  or  dress,  for  instance,  still  benefit 
the  wine-growers,  the  florists  and  the  dress-makers.  It 
is  not  the  best  expenditure,  of  course,  because  the 
result  of  the  labor  disappears  quickly,  does  not  add  to 
the  permanent  wealth  of  the  country,  but  it  nevertheless 
puts  money  in  use.  It  is  not,  however,  like  building  a 
Pacific  Railway.  Here  millions  of  money  are  spent  in 
establishing  a  permanent  transportation  line,  and  liter- 
ally millions  of  people  are  benefited  by  the  expenditure. 
It  is  not  solely  the  millionaire  who  invests,  or  the  officers 
who  are  employed  in  the  work,  or  the  bond-holders  and 
stock-holders  who  get  dividends ;  but  it  is  the  thousands 
of  workmen  who  get  wages,  the  shippers  of  goods  at 
either  end  of  the  line,  and  every  man  in  every  town 
through  which  the  road  runs,  and  every  farmer  whose 
farm  borders  upon  it.  It  rightly  and  properly  "de- 
velops" the  country,  not  for  the  sole  gain  of  a  Hill  or  a 
Villard  or  a  Huntington;  but  for  the  benefit  of  all  the 
people  in  the  country. 

This  is  equally  true  of  every  respectable  industrial  or 
commercial  enterprise  of  whatever  nature.  They  are 
helping  and  benefiting  others  besides  the  so-called 


124  THE  MONEY  GOD 

"owner."  Of  course,  the  popular  idea  still  prevails 
that  a  Rockefeller,  for  instance,  is  worth  so  many 
hundreo!s  of  millions,  and  that  he  sits  in  a  luxurious 
home,  and  somehow  feeds  upon  his  money.  People 
will  not  grasp  the  elementary  fact  that  his  millions  are 
in  the  oil  industry,  hi  wells  and  pipes,  in  fleets  of  steam- 
ers, in  railways,  in  warehouses,  in  various  subsidiary 
enterprises;  and  that  this  great  industry  is  not  alone 
for  Mr.  Rockefeller  or  the  thousands  of  other  stock- 
holders, great  and  small,  but  for  the  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  people  who  get  wages  and  salaries  and  per- 
centages and  profits  from  it.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  prac- 
tically every  dollar  of  the  Rockefeller  money  is  at  work 
hi  some  industrial  or  business  enterprise — at  work  not 
only  for  Mr.  Rockefeller,  but  for  thousands  of  others. 
Stop  the  Standard  Oil  Corporation,  stop  the  mills  of 
the  United  States  Steel  Corporation,  stop  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad,  and  with  a  million  of  men  lacking 
wages,  salaries,  and  dividends,  there  would  be  a  swift 
realization  of  the  fact  that  profit  and  loss  in  these  enter- 
prises are  shared  by  the  community  as  well  as  by  the 
millionaire. 

One  more  illustration.  The  Duke  of  Buccleuch  is 
one  of  the  largest  land-holders  in  Great  Britain,  his 
dominion  extending  some  thirty  miles  or  more  in  length, 
and  comprising  some  460,000  acres.  He  is  the  owner 
of  the  land  in  fee,  but  hi  its  direction  he  is  only  the 
manager,  the  overseer — and  a  very  hard-worked  over- 
seer at  that,  since  he  is  continually  putting  into  prac- 


THE  MILLIONAIRE,  TRUSTEE  125 

tice  new  ideas  with  modern  machinery.  There  are 
three  thousand  tenants,  living  well  and  happily,  even 
profitably,  upon  his  estate.  There  is  said  to  be  not  a 
single  case  of  poverty  or  distress  among  them,  so  ex- 
cellent is  the  management,  so  perfect  the  husbandry, 
of  the  estate.  The  duke,  by  his  indefatigable  energy 
and  direction  has  developed  his  property  to  the  utmost, 
not  perhaps  so  much  for  himself  as  for  his  tenantry. 
They  have  benefited  by  his  profound  study  of  agri- 
culture and  machinery,  as  well  as  by  his  real  estate 
and  invested  capital.  Old  man  as  he  now  is,  I  am  told, 
he  is  still  on  horseback  at  eight  every  morning,  riding 
his  estates  to  find  where  some  waste  may  be  stopped, 
some  odd  acre  made  to  bear  more,  or  some  new  indus- 
try established.  A  few  years  ago,  in  travelling  across 
his  property,  a  haphazard  American  acquaintance  in 
the  car,  having  heard  that  the  duke  owned  some  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  acres,  remarked  with  consider- 
able emphasis  to  an  Englishman  sitting  beside  him 
that  he  thought  the  duke  ought  to  be  shot.  The 
reason  he  gave  for  his  belief  was  that  "no  person 
ought  to  own  so  much  property."  To  this,  being 
quite  nonplussed,  I  ventured  only  an  extravagance  in 
kind  to  the  effect  that  if  the  duke  could  manage  the 
whole  world  as  successfully  as  his  own  estate,  I  should 
be  in  favor  of  giving  it  to  him. 

For  now  we  are  coming  to  still  another  related 
proposition,  namely:  that  the  millionaire,  whether  a 
land-holder  or  a  stock-holder,  is  also  a  trust-holder.  To 


126  THE  MONEY  GOD 

summarize  former  statements,  if  money  and  wealth  are 
not  put  to  a  proper  use  they  become  worthless ;  if  they 
are  put  to  a  proper  use,  they  must  benefit  others. 
Therefore  the  word  "owner,"  if  by  it  is  meant  the  ex* 
elusive  possession  of  wealth  or  money,  is  a  misnomer, 
and  the  word  "trustee"  is  more  appropriate.  The 
millionaire,  by  his  certificates  of  stock,  controls  and 
manages,  but  he  does  not  own  a  railway  or  a  mill  in 
the  same  sense  in  which  he  does  a  picture  or  a  piano. 
He  can  sell  one  as  readily  perhaps  as  the  other,  but  his 
selling  the  railway  merely  passes  on  the  management 
to  another,  and  does  not  change  the  character  of  the 
ownership.  The  dozen  millionaires  who  are  vaguely 
said  to  "own"  one-twelfth  of  the  wealth  of  the  United 
States  might  "control"  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad, 
but  they  must  do  so  as  trustees  for  one  hundred  thou^ 
sand  employees  and  many  thousands  of  small  stock- 
holders, to  say  nothing  of  the  community  at  large.  If 
they  benefit  themselves  individually  by  a  wise  control 
of  the  road  they  must  benefit  also  those  who  are 
connected  with  it.  If  the  control  is  not  wise,  they  not 
only  lose  money  themselves,  but  all  the  other  interested 
parties  lose  with  them.  There  can  be  no  absolutely 
selfish  or  personal  use  made  of  such  property  without 
producing  financial  disaster. 

One  of  the  more  prominent  of  the  millionaires  has 
said  something  about  this  trusteeship  that  will  bear  re- 
peating. In  his  Gospel  of  Wealth  Mr.  Carnegie  states  his 
belief  that  it  is  the  duty  of  the  man  of  wealth  "to  con- 


THE  MILLIONAIRE,  TRUSTEE  127 

sider  all  surplus  revenues  which  come  to  him  simply  as 
trust  funds,  which  he  is  called  upon  to  administer,  and 
strictly  bound  as  a  matter  of  duty  to  administer  in  the 
manner  which  in  his  judgment  is  best  calculated  to 
produce  the  most  beneficial  results  for  the  community — * 
the  man  of  wealth  thus  becoming  the  mere  trustee  and 
agent  for  his  poorer  brethren,  bringing  to  their  service 
his  superior  wisdom,  experience,  and  ability  to  admin- 
ister, doing  for  them  better  than  they  would  or  could 
do  for  themselves." 

Few  people  will  be  found  to  quarrel  with  that  state- 
ment. It  is  sound  and  true  enough  gospel.  The  only 
trouble  with  it  is  that  it  does  not  go  far  enough.  The 
man  of  wealth  is  not  a  should-be,  but  a  must-be,  trustee 
— he  is  a  trustee  for  all  his  brethren,  rich  and  poor 
alike,  whether  he  wishes  to  be  or  not.  As  long  as  he 
holds  control  and  uses  his  wealth  wisely  it  must  be  for 
the  benefit  of  others  as  well  as  himself.  But  does 
he  always  use  it  wisely?  Emphatically  no!  He  is 
sometimes  a  thoroughly  bad  trustee,  sometimes  a 
foolish  one,  sometimes  a  good  one;  but  good,  bad,  or 
foolish,  he  is  still  trustee — a  conditional  owner  of 
wealth.  These  different  phases  of  trusteeship  should 
be  briefly  illustrated  to  show  how  they  are  regarded, 
not  only  by  the  public,  but  by  the  law  of  the  land. 

The  use  of  money  to  make  "combinations  in  re- 
straint of  trade,"  to  create  monopolies  or  tariffs  that 
benefit  one  class  at  the  expense  of  other  classes,  to  ob- 
tain rebates  or  other  unfair  commercial  advantage,  to 


128  THE  MONEY  GOD 

engineer  stock  operations — in  short,  to  promote  any 
form  of  swindling,  gambling,  or  cheating — will  suggest 
the  trusteeship  badly  OT  corruptly  administered.  Every 
one  condemns  this  use  of  wealth;  and  the  courts  take 
cognizance  of  it  tc  the  extent  of  forbidding  by  injunc- 
tion, fining  heavily,  and  even  dissolving  combinations 
that  thus  misuse  their  power.  It  is,  indeed,  a  much- 
mooted  question  if  the  general  government  has  not  a 
right  to  wrest  the  trusteeship  from  those  corporations 
that  violate  the  Inter-State  Commerce  Act,  if  it  has  not 
a  right  to  confiscate  property  wrongfully  and  illegally 
administered  by  its  owners.  The  question  has  yet  to 
be  decided  by  the  courts,  and  the  decision  will  be 
watched  with  interest,  since  it  may  prove  the  entering 
wedge  of  a  perhaps  undesirable  government  ownership 
— a  trusteeship  located  in  the  government  instead  of 
in  the  individual. 

Money  withdrawn  from  use  and  hoarded  is  another 
illustration  of  a  trusteeship  badly  managed.  It  benefits 
no  one,  not  even  the  hoarder.  The  "wicked  and 
slothful  servant''  who  hid  his  talent  in  the  earth  was 
condemned  for  this  very  thing;  but  the  prodigal  son, 
who  spent  his  substance  in  riotous  living,  was  forgiven, 
because  he  was  merely  foolish.  So,  to-day,  the  miser  is 
despised  by  all,  but  the  young  millionaire  who  ad- 
ministers his  trust  by  lavish  expenditures  foi  wine, 
women,  and  song;  yachts,  autos,  and  horses;  functions, 
flowers,  and  fripperies  is  accounted  merely  a  blethering 
idiot  who  will  probably  some  day  come  to  his  senses. 


THE  MILLIONAIRE,  TRUSTEE  129 

In  the  meantime,  a  certain  latitude  in  abusing  his 
trusteeship  is  allowed  the  prodigal,  legally  as  well  as 
morally.  But  he  is  not  to  go  too  far.  If  he  becomes 
an  habitual  drunkard,  an  incompetent  spendthrift,  or 
a  person  non  compos  mentis,  the  courts  will  intervene 
and  take  his  trusteeship  out  of  his  hands  by  appointing 
a  guardian.  However,  the  trusteeship  foolishly  ad- 
ministered is  usually  tolerated  by  the  law,  if  not  by  the 
moral  sense  of  the  people,  but  it  is  never  praised 
except  by  folly  itself. 

Of  the  trusteeship  properly  handled  there  are  count- 
less examples;  but,  contrary  to  the  general  belief,  in- 
discriminate giving  for  charity  is  not  among  them.  It 
is  safe  to  say  that  there  is  more  harm  than  good  done 
by  the  generously-disposed  person  whose  means  are  in 
inverse  ratio  to  his  brains.  Indigency  and  pauperism 
are  plants  of  quick  growth,  and  need  only  a  very  little 
encouragement.  Giving,  however,  for  purposes  that 
stimulate  or  educate  or  cultivate,  or  otherwise  benefit 
the  public  is  not  only  proper  and  right  administration, 
but  philanthropy  in  the  bargain.  The  country  in  par- 
ticular and  the  world  in  general  are  certainly  the 
better  for  good  hospitals,  libraries,  museums,  uni- 
versities, technical  schools,  churches,  music  halls, 
parks,  and  other  institutions  of  a  like  nature.  They 
serve  the  whole  public  and  they  better  the  whole 
community. 

Of  this  giving  (which  is  merely  a  transfer  of  the 
trusteeship,  usually  to  a  municipality  or  a  board  of  direc- 


130  THE  MONEY  GOD 

tors)  there  have  been  many  notable  examples  in  America. 
It  is  altogether  to  the  credit  of  the  much-abused  mil- 
lionaire that  he  has  given  for  various  purposes  not  hun- 
dreds or  thousands,  but  millions;  and  with  a  willing- 
ness quite  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  philanthropy. 
There  is  often  a  question  raised,  however,  whether  the 
money  has  been  given  wisely  or  foolishly — this  being 
usually  dependent  upon  whether  the  questioner  is  or  is 
not  interested  in  the  object  of  the  gift.  And,  aside 
from  that,  giving  of  any  sort  may  be  economically 
questioned  in  another  way.  It  is  proverbially  bad 
manners  to  question  gifts,  but  let  us  make  a  venture 
in  rudeness. 

The  philanthropist  cannot  give  money  in  one  direc- 
tion without  foregoing  or  stopping  its  use  in  other 
directions.  For  instance,  Mr.  Rockefeller  donates  a 
million  dollars  to  the  University  of  Chicago.  It  goes 
into  the  building  fund  of  the  university,  and  eventually 
perhaps  several  college  halls  stand  on  the  grounds  as  the 
equivalent  of  the  money.  These  are  of  benefit  to  the 
university,  they  have  value  and  use  to  students  and 
faculty  alike;  and,  besides,  they  add  to  the  wealth  and 
goodly  appearance  of  the  city.  Everybody  concurs  in 
thinking  the  gift  a  good  one,  and  Mr.  Rockefeller  is 
praised  for  his  generosity.  But  let  us  suppose  that  he 
does  something  else  with  that  million — something  of  a 
purely  business  nature.  Suppose  he  establishes  with 
it  a  shoe  or  button  factory  in  Chicago  and  gives  em- 
ployment to  five  hundred  or  a  thousand  people  in  the 


THE  MILLIONAIRE,  TRUSTEE  131 

slum  district — enables  them  to  make  a  decent  living. 
Is  he  not  now  a  benefactor  of  mankind,  and  that,  too, 
notwithstanding  he  holds  the  title  of  the  property  in 
his  own  hands,  and  talks  no  commonplaces  about 
philanthropy  ?  Of  course,  his  critics  would  say  that  he 
was  "a  grasping  plutocrat"  trying  to  add  to  his  riches, 
keeping  wealth  in  his  own  hands  for  his  own  use;  but, 
being  a  very  competent  trustee  of  that  million  of  dollars, 
why  should  he  not  keep  it  in  his  own  hands  instead  of 
turning  it  over  to  some  college  board  of  less  com- 
petency? And  why  is  he  not  benefiting  others  by  his 
"grasping"  business  undertaking? 

Let  us  consider  another  case  with  which  the  public 
is  very  familiar.  Mr.  Carnegie  has  given,  let  us  say, 
a  hundred  million  dollars  for  libraries.  The  money 
has  gone  into  buildings  that  have  been  put  up  in 
public  places,  in  many  towns  and  cities.  There  is  not 
a  particle  of  doubt  that  these  buildings  are  of  use,  that 
they  beautify  their  respective  towns,  and  that  the 
libraries  have  been  of  educational  value  in  the  coun- 
try. The  giving  is  accounted  a  wise  use  of  money, 
and  Mr.  Carnegie  has  been,  and  must  be,  applauded 
for  both  wisdom  and  generosity.  But  now  suppose, 
again,  that  he  had  put  his  one  hundred  million  dol- 
lars into  the  building  of  a  railway  from  Mexico  City 
through  Central  America  and  the  Isthmus  into  South 
America  as  far  down  as  Argentina.  Suppose  that  this 
undertaking  caused  the  placing  of  permanent  tracks, 
bridges,  viaducts,  furnished  permanent  employment 


132  THE  MONEY  GOD 

to  one  hundred  thousand  men,  opened  up  a  new  country 
to  settlement,  made  possible  homes  and  livings  for  fifty 
millions  of  people.  What  now  ?  Would  not  this  be  a 
wise  trusteeship,  though  Mr.  Carnegie  still  held  control 
of  the  stock  and  bonds?  Of  course,  no  one  would 
applaud  him,  he  would  only  be  "a  shrewd  business 
man"  to  some,  and  "an  octopus"  threatening  the  very 
life  of  the  nation  to  others ;  but,  nevertheless,  would  he 
not  be  quite  as  much  of  a  benefactor  to  mankind  at 
large,  with  his  railway  as  with  his  libraries  ? 

To  that  last  question  there  is  a  yes-and-no  answer. 
The  people  in  the  community  who  are  stickling  for  the 
intellectual  and  moral  side  of  life  will  answer  in  the 
negative.  They  will  say  that  the  railway  project  has 
to  do  with  the  material  phase  of  civilization  only,  that 
it  means  more  "business,"  more  money-making,  more 
consumption,  and  that  we  have  enough  of  these  with 
us  already.  They  will  insist  that  we  need  to  develop 
man's  higher  nature  with  books,  art,  music,  science, 
rather  than  his  lower  nature  with  much  food,  drink, 
and  pleasure.  With  all  of  that  I  am  in  perfect  accord. 
These  pages  have  been  written  to  support  such  an 
idea.  But  the  argument  must  not  be  overdriven,  nor 
the  idea  carried  to  an  extreme.  There  can  be  no  ig- 
noring of  the  material  side  of  life.  The  physical  man 
is  the  foundation  of  the  intellectual.  You  cannot  make 
a  man  think  his  best  on  an  empty  stomach.  Besides, 
the  animal  in  us  deserves  just  as  much  support  and 
education  as  the  mental  in  us.  Neither  is  to  be  de- 


THE  MILLIONAIRE,  TRUSTEE  133 

spised,  but  both  are  to  be  properly  cultivated.  The 
extreme  of  either  is  open  to  criticism.  Just  at  present 
there  is  entirely  too  much  of  the  commercial  and  the 
material  in  American  life,  but  we  shall  not  help  our 
cause  or  get  nearer  to  the  normal  by  rushing  to  the 
other  end  of  the  seesaw.  The  Carnegie  libraries  are 
of  value  to  the  community,  and  the  supposed  Carnegie 
railway  through  South  America  would  be  of  value  too. 
Either  of  them  should  be  considered  a  wise  use  of 
money — a  trusteeship  properly  administered. 

It  may  be  objected  that  these  illustrations  apply  only 
to  capital  and  do  not  deal  with  the  fabulous  incomes 
of  the  very  rich;  that  a  man  with  ten  millions  a  year 
is  not  a  trustee,  but  a  consumer  of  that  amount.  Not 
so.  Most  of  the  gifts  of  the  millionaires  are  from 
income  rather  than  from  capital.  They  are  continually 
reinvesting  or  starting  new  enterprises  with  their  surplus 
means.  Even  if  income  is  deposited  in  the  banks  or  the 
trust  companies,  it  is  still  in  use,  for  it  is  being  loaned 
out  by  them.  Neither  capital  nor  income  lies  idle.  The 
best  use  of  money  by  the  millionaire  trustee  is,  perhaps, 
that  in  which  he  keeps  the  capital  at  work  in  furnish- 
ing material  welfare  to  wage-earners  and  others,  but 
applies  the  income  to  the  advancement  of  intellectual 
things.  Mr.  Carnegie's  gift  of  twelve  million  dollars 
to  aid  scientific,  historic,  and  philosophic  research  is  an 
instance  of  this.  He  gave  the  twelve  millions  in  United 
States  Steel  Corporation  bonds  to  a  board  of  trustees 
for  administration.  The  wealth  is  still  at  Pittsburgh 


134  THE  MONEY  GOD 

in  the  mills  of  the  Carnegie  Steel  Company,  the  money 
(the  paper  token  in  bonds)  is  in  the  hands  and  under  the 
control  of  the  trustees  of  the  Carnegie  Foundation,  the 
income  is  being  used  in  research  looking  to  the  intel- 
lectual betterment  of  mankind. 

But  we  may  pause  for  the  moment  with  the  con- 
clusion that  the  rich  man  is  a  trustee  of  wealth,  whether 
he  so  desires  or  not,  adding  only  this  further  suggestion, 
that  since  wealth  must  be  administered  for  the  benefit 
of  the  many  it  is  perhaps  as  well  that  it  should  remain 
in  the  hands  of  one  man  of  experience  and  executive 
ability,  as  in  the  keeping  of  a  thousand  of  less  experience 
and  less  ability.  The  Duke  of  Buccleuch  knows  how 
to  handle  his  trust  of  land,  as  Mr.  Carnegie  his  trust 
of  a  great  industry.  Therefore,  why  not  let  them 
handle?  Could  the  thousands  of  tenants  and  wage- 
earners  control  and  administer  for  themselves  as  well  ? 
It  is  doubtful.  The  argument  for  restricting  individual 
control,  by  limiting  fortunes  to  a  hundred  thousand  or 
a  million  dollars,  is  not  strong.  Besides,  there  are 
serious  disadvantages  to  be  considered.  How  will  you 
carry  through  great  enterprises  like  trans-American 
railways  when  no  man  has  more  than  a  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars  with  which  to  take  the  initiative  ?  Would 
it  be  possible  to  construct  tunnels  under  the  Hudson 
River  at  New  York  by  passing  around  the  hat  for 
thousand-dollar  subscriptions  ? 

One  may  not  admire  plutocracy.  Generally  speak- 
ing, the  materialism  of  it  is  depressing,  its  arrogance  is 


THE  MILLIONAIRE,  TRUSTEE  135 

galling,  and  the  low  ideals  of  many  of  its  members  are 
contemptible.  But  it  nevertheless  has  its  uses,  is  per- 
haps necessary  to  modern  life,  and  very  often  is  to  be 
credited  with  wise  action  and  true  philanthropy. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  MONEY 

IF  the  contention  of  the  preceding  chapter  is  correct, 
it  may  be  pertinently  asked:  What,  then,  is  the  value 
of  great  wealth  ?  How  does  it  profit  a  man  to  gain  the 
whole  world  if  he  cannot  enclose  it  with  a  fence  and 
keep  others  off  the  premises?  Why  bother  with  a 
trusteeship — with  the  handling  of  millions  for  the 
benefit  of  the  unthinking,  and  perhaps  the  unthanking  ? 

To  such  questions  there  may  be  several  answers  or 
explanations.  Some  of  the  millionaires  may  agree  with 
Mr.  Carnegie  that  their  wealth  is  something  they  are 
"strictly  bound  as  a  matter  of  duty  to  administer  in  the 
manner  which,  in  their  judgment,  is  best  calculated  to 
produce  the  most  beneficial  results  for  the  community." 
There  are  others  who  have  had  the  responsibility  of 
wealth  thrust  upon  them  by  inheritance  or  business 
circumstances,  and  cannot  in  decency  to  their  family, 
their  associates,  or  their  compatriots,  shirk  it.  There 
are  still  others  who,  for  this  or  that  reason  of  a  per- 
sonal or  exceptional  nature,  continue  to  hold  and  to 
add  to  their  holdings.  But,  .aside  from  these  million- 
aires, there  are  quite  a  number  of  the  very  wealthy  who 
136 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  MONEY  137 

have  a  different  reason  for  retaining  control  of  their 
wealth.  It  gives  them  power. 

This  is  not  a  new  conception  of  the  value  of  money. 
In  fact,  it  is  a  very  old  one,  but  its  application  in  mod- 
ern life  is  even  more  marked  than  in  the  days  of  Croesus 
or  Maecenas.  The  man  to-day  who  controls  half  a 
billion  of  dollars  is,  or  may  be,  almost  as  far-reaching 
in  his  power  as  a  king  of  England  or  a  president  of  the 
United  States.  It  is  possible  for  him,  with  such  wealth, 
to  be  a  pillar  of  strength  in  the  financial  and  commercial 
world,  to  undertake  great  railway  and  steamship  enter- 
prises, to  develop  new  industries  and  mechanisms;  or 
to  be  a  philanthropist,  a  first  citizen,  a  promoter  of 
public  improvements,  a  founder  of  national  institutions. 
Many  of  the  rich  are  ambitious  to  do  good  with  their 
wealth,  if  they  knew  how;  and  others  are  at  least 
well-disposed  toward  their  fellow-man,  and  put  their 
money  to  such  uses  as  they  think  will  produce  per- 
manent betterment.  The  idea  of  the  masses  that  the 
rich  man  is  always  either  a  fool  or  a  knave,  generally 
the  latter,  is  by  no  means  well  founded.  Of  course, 
any  one  of  us  could  spend  his  money  to  greater  advan- 
tage— that  needs  no  argument;  but,  possibly,  if  we 
were  in  his  place  we  might  find  that  there  are  some 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  wise  money-expenditure,  some 
problems  in  the  administration  of  wealth  that  are  still 
seeking  solution. 

The  reverse  of  such  disposition  and  action  is  the 
use  of  money  power  by  the  vicious  for  the  promotion 


138  THE  MONEY  GOD 

of  their  own  selfish  schemes.  This  is,  unfortunately, 
too  common  for  denial  or  even  discussion.  The 
corrupt  millionaire  has  many  tunes  used  his  wealth 
to  ruin  competing  industries,  to  wreck  railways,  to  loot 
banks  and  trust  companies,  to  buy  up  legislation — 
in  short,  to  commit  many  assaults  on  honesty  and 
decency,  and  still  by  artful  dodging  keep  out  of  the 
penitentiary.  Nor  are  the  financial  buccaneers  all  of 
Wall  Street  nativity.  The  recent  investigations  into 
the  methods  pursued  by  officers  of  banks  and  in- 
surance companies,  by  directors  of  beef,  oil,  lumber, 
and  tobacco  trusts,  by  men  in  control  of  trolley  com- 
panies and  public  franchises,  are  still  fresh  in  the 
public  memory.  That  Mr.  Roosevelt's  administration 
has  been  considered  hostile  to  trusts,  and  that  the 
majority  of  the  people  in  the  country  have  applauded 
this  hostility,  suggests  of  itself  that  there  is  a  deep- 
seated  feeling  against  those  who  are  in  control  of  large 
money  power — a  feeling  that  at  least  they  are  danger- 
ous to  the  community. 

It  may  be  said  that  many  of  the  government  prose- 
cutions of  the  trusts  have  been  ill-advised,  that  some  of 
the  business  vices  nominated  in  the  Inter-State  Com- 
merce Act  were  once  esteemed  business  virtues;  and 
that  those  who  are  urging  on  the  government  to  still 
further  action  are  not  after  the  sin  but  the  sinner. 
There  is,  no  doubt,  some  truth  in  that.  We  have  a  way 
of  correcting  our  financial  or  political  malefactors  only 
once  in  a  dozen  years,  but  doing  it  then  with  an  axe. 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  MONEY  139 

We  allow  millionaires  to  accumulate  wealth  by  ques- 
tionable methods,  and  then  flay  them,  not  for  their 
methods,  but  their  millions.  There  is  some  of  the 
spirit  of  human  envy  in  this,  but  back  of  it  there  is  also 
a  fear  of  the  money  power.  The  desire  to  cripple  or 
restrain  that  power  is  apparent  in  all  the  foolish  acts  of 
the  state  legislatures,  in  the  talk  of  the  great  Half- 
Baked  about  government  control,  limitations  to  wealth, 
communistic  holdings,  and  the  like.  The  unwise,  and 
the  corrupt  millionaires  have  brought  the  trusteeship  of 
wealth  into  bad  repute. 

Still,  there  is  a  great  deal  of  unnecessary  cracking  of 
the  whip  over  all  this.  There  are  thousands  of  honest 
men  in  trusts  and  railways  who  have  never  been  in- 
vestigated, and  hundreds  of  millionaires  who  have 
benefited,  not  harmed,  their  fellow-men.  But  the  sun- 
pie  annals  of  the  rich  do  not  make  the  best  capital  for 
politicians,  nor  do  they  furnish  the  most  fetching  sort 
of  scare-heads  for  the  daily  press.  There  is  more 
shouting  in  the  land  over  one  millionaire  that  goeth 
astray  than  over  the  ninety-nine  that  keep  to  the  road. 
This  may  be  a  very  proper  precaution  on  the  part  of 
the  public,  a  safeguarding  of  the  general  interest  as 
opposed  to  that  of  the  individual;  but  it  brings  no 
great  joy  to  the  millionaire.  Good  or  bad,  he  is  watched 
with  suspicion;  he  is  thought  to  have  acquired  his 
millions  in  some  crooked  way,  and  in  any  event  he  is 
considered  too  rich  to  be  honest.  Just  at  present  he 
is  a  very  much  harried  person.  Under  investigation 


140  THE  MONEY  GOD 

he  sometimes  collapses,  dies  suddenly,  or  perhaps  com- 
mits suicide.  The  ridicule  of  the  press,  the  anathemas 
of  the  mob,  the  severity  of  the  courts,  are  too  much 
for  him.  Humanity  cannot  stand  up  under  such  a 
strain.  Even  in  times  of  peace,  with  a  good  con- 
science, a  good  name,  and  public  respect,  the  rich 
man  must  wonder  at  times  if  his  power  is  worth  the 
having,  if  all  his  wealth  compensates  for  all  his  work 
and  worry,  if  standing  in  the  lime-light  surrounded 
by  a  crowd  is  as  wholesome  or  as  agreeable  as  stand- 
ing in  the  sunlight  quite  alone. 

Yet  there  are  plenty  of  people  who  are  eager  enough 
to  step  into  the  millionaire's  shoes.  Almost  every  youth 
in  the  land  admires  him,  and  has  the  ambition  to  be 
like  him.  The  country  boy  no  longer  carries  Washing- 
ton or  Webster  in  his  mind's  eye.  He  has  been  told 
that  the  day  of  speech-making  is  past,  and  that  now 
money  is  the  only  thing  that  "talks."  He  wants  to  be 
a  great  financier,  or  a  captain  of  industry,  or  a  trust 
magnate;  he  aspires  to  be  a  Carnegie  or  a  Rockefeller 
or  a  Morgan.  Of  course,  not  one  in  a  hundred  thou- 
sand of  his  type  ever  arrives.  Each  one  has  over- 
estimated his  own  ability  and  underestimated  the 
difficulties  of  acquiring  wealth.  At  forty,  perhaps,  the 
whilom  youth  realizes  that  if  he  can  get  enough  money 
to  keep  the  wolf  from  the  door  in  old  age  he  will  be 
accomplishing  a  good  deal.  He  has  been  honest  and 
decent  all  his  life,  perhaps,  paying  his  debts,  living  re- 
spectably, and  in  a  fair  way  toward  dying  respected. 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  MONEY  141 

He  had  not  the  ability  to  rise  to  great  heights.  In 
boyhood  he  shot  his  arrows  at  the  stars  (as  many  of  us 
have)  and  missed  them  (as  most  of  us  do),  but  he  is 
not  a  failure  for  all  that.  It  is  something  to  have  been 
just  a  plain  decent  citizen. 

Unfortunately  for  us  as  a  people,  we  have  not  enough 
of  plain  decent  citizens.  We  have  too  many  of  just 
plain  money-grubbers  who  intend  to  get  money  by 
hook  or  by  crook,  by  decent  or  indecent  methods,  by 
fair  means  or  by  foul.  Let  us  not  deceive  ourselves  in 
thinking  that  all  the  "undesirable  citizens"  are  mil- 
lionaires, that  all  the  malefactors  are  big  and  influen- 
tial. The  little  rascals  are  more  prevalent  in  numbers 
and  more  unscrupulous  in  methods,  since  they  are  not 
in  that  fierce  light  that  beats  upon  the  throne.  Some  of 
them  are,  perhaps  in  the  incipient  stage  at  the  moment, 
but  eventually  they  will  arrive  at  full-fledged  rascality, 
if  not  to  unlimited  wealth.  For  instance,  the  surface 
car  companies  of  New  York  City  report  that  they  have 
to  discharge  their  three  thousand  conductors  twice 
over  each  year  for  failure  to  register  fares.  Whenever 
or  wherever  anything  is  so  eagerly  sought  for  as 
money  in  America  to-day,  it  is  sure  to  give  rise  to 
tricky  methods  and  unfair  dealings  among  all  classes. 

Just  now,  no  enterprise  is  too  low,  no  business  is  too 
disreputable  to  embark  in,  if  it  will  pay.  One  mar- 
vels at  the  mean  ambitions  of  men,  at  the  things  they 
will  do  to  get  money.  And,  strange  enough,  the  man 
who  is  engaged  in  some  questionable  business  seems 


142  THE  MONEY  GOD 

only  too  glad  to  have  his  family  name  and  personality 
trumpeted  up  and  down  the  land.  The  confusion  of 
thought  between  fame  and  notoriety  leads  the  toilet- 
powder  man  to  have  his  picture  pasted  on  the  cover  of 
the  box,  and  the  beer  and  whiskey  venders  to  have 
their  names  blown  in  the  bottle.  If  the  business  is 
particularly  disreputable,  it  calls  for  a  still  wider  ad- 
vertising on  fences  and  buildings,  with  more  and  larger 
portraiture  attached.  Half  of  the  huge  signs  advertise 
businesses  that  no  self-respecting  man  would  lend  his 
name  to.  And,  of  course,  almost  every  one  of  them 
lies  about  the  goods.  The  boxed  preparations  are  not 
"brain  food,"  or  even  good  stomach  food;  the  baking 
powders  are  not  "pure";  the  cheap  furniture  and 
clothing  are  not  "the  best";  the  patent  medicines  are 
not  "harmless,"  neither  are  they  "a  sure  cure."  Fifty 
per  cent,  of  these  advertisers  are  just  ordinary  swindlers 
obtaining  money  under  false  pretences.  But  they  must 
have  the  money.  What  they  will  do  with  it  when  there 
is  a  million  or  more  they  hardly  know,  but  they  think 
they  can  be  happy  with  it,  or  at  least  command  respect 
by  its  possession.  So,  indeed,  they  might  if  the  label 
of  their  disreputable  business  did  not  stick  to  them. 
The  devil  could  have  worn  a  saint's  robe  unsuspected 
if  it  were  not  for  that  cloven  hoof. 

Those  who  publish  the  infamous  newspapers,  who 
keep  the  gambling  houses  and  saloons,  who  sell  the 
races  or  their  vote  or  political  offices,  are  practically  on 
the  same  rung  of  the  ladder.  Nor  are  the  gamblers  in 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  MONEY  143 

Wall  Street  much  higher  up  or  better.  They  are  after 
money,  and  though  they  may  differ  from  the  ordinary 
gambler,  yet  the  difference  is  devoid  of  any  great  dis- 
tinction. Obtaining  something  for  nothing  is  a  desire 
held  in  common  by  all  the  get-rich-quick  contingent. 
Even  the  pick-pocket  and  the  thief  are  not  without  it. 
Indeed,  the  burglar's  lust  for  wealth  has  grown  so 
abnormal  in  the  last  few  years  that  the  Burglary  In- 
surance companies  have  recently  served  notice  upon 
their  clients  that  they  must  have  higher  premiums  or 
go  out  of  business.  Fifteen  millions  were  the  reported 
house  stealings  of  last  year  in  New  York  City  alone. 

The  dive-keeper,  the  pick-pocket  and  the  thief  are, 
however,  somewhat  limited  in  their  demands.  They 
want  money  for  personal  use,  and  have  no  ambition 
except  to  live  without  work;  but  the  promoter  who 
"waters"  stock,  the  speculator  who  "corners"  wheat, 
cotton,  or  corn,  the  monopolist  who  exacts  exorbitant 
prices  because  he  controls  the  situation,  whatever  it 
may  be,  want  money  for  personal  power.  They  wish 
to  control,  to  dictate  to  others  about  commercial 
and  financial  undertakings,  to  be  called  "the  Cotton 
King"  or  "the  Copper  King,"  to  be  feared  by  com- 
petitors, to  be  consulted  by  politicians  and  cajoled  by 
fellow-directors,  to  be  pointed  out  on  the  street  and 
whispered  over  as  they  enter  a  room,  to  have  their 
houses  and  horses  and  dinners  talked  about  in  the 
papers.  This  is  as  near  the  hero  or  the  king  as  a  free 
people  will  tolerate.  It  is  as  much  power  as  the  citizen 


\ 


144  THE  MONEY  GOD 

in  private  life  is  likely  to  attain.  For  it  the  promoter, 
the  stock  manipulator,  the  business  man  do  not  hesitate 
at  doing  unworthy  and  even  illegal  things.  They  dis- 
criminate through  protective  tariffs  against  their  own 
people  by  selling  their  wares  cheaper  in  Europe  and 
Asia  than  in  America,  they  arrange  for  secret  rebates 
and  concessions,  they  give  out  false  values  in  im- 
portations, receive  improper  commissions  and  percent- 
ages, work  poor  materials  into  manufacture,  form  il- 
legal combinations  for  higher  prices.  Not  all  of  them, 
to  be  sure — by  no  means  all — yet  many  come  to  great 
wealth  by  just  such  means. 

But  whatever  the  aim  in  attaining  money,  or  the  use 
to  which  it  is  put,  all  classes  seem  to  desire  it.  Big 
and  little,  good  and  bad,  rich  man,  poor  man,  beggar 
man,  thief,  are  all  after  it.  They  are  willing  enough, 
it  appears,  to  sacrifice  health,  friends,  principles,  an 
honest  name,  and  even  common  decency  to  get  it. 
Perhaps  in  the  latter  half  of  their  lives,  with  nothing 
remaining  to  them  but  money,  they  begin  to  realize 
that  the  sacrifice  has  been  too  great.  In  gaining  mil- 
lions they  have  lost  many  things.  While  working  over- 
time in  heaping  up  a  surplus,  the  glory  of  the  world, 
the  beauty  of  life,  the  pleasure  of  content  have  gone  by 
on  the  other  side  unknown  and  unnoticed.  And  alas  I 
they  have  developed  but  one  side  of  their  nature,  and 
that  perhaps  not  the  most  desirable  side. 

Despite  the  materialistic  philosophy  of  the  day,  man 
is  something  more  than  an  animal.  He  has  within 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  MONEY  145 

him  mental  and  moral  natures  as  capable  of  develop- 
ment as  is  his  physical  nature.  The  properly  educated 
man  develops  all  three  of  these  in  such  a  degree  that  no 
one  exceeds,  but  each  blends  harmoniously  with  the 
others  to  make  the  full-rounded,  complete  type.  If 
only  one  of  these  natures  is  cultivated,  the  man  is  as 
badly  off  as  though  he  had  cultivated  only  one  of  his 
senses.  He  suffers  from  under-development  in  certain 
features,  and  from  over-development  in  other  features. 
The  abnormal  vision  in  the  giant's  left  eye  was  just 
as  bad  as  the  subnormal  vision  in  his  right  eye.  HeJ 
could  not  see  truly  with  either. 

It  is  a  contention  of  these  chapters  that  we  Ameri- 
cans are  not  developing  all  our  natures  proportion- 
ately, that  we  are  sacrificing  the  higher  to  the  lower, 
and  exalting  the  material  at  the  expense  of  the  mental 
and  the  moral.  And  with  none  of  them  do  we  ap- 
proach the  normal.  Even  the  physical  man  is  over- 
trained, overworked,  and  overfed.  As  a  result,  his 
heart  is  weak,  his  stomach  capricious,  his  nerves  strung 
to  the  breaking  point.  He  slaves  for  luxuries,  and  then 
suffers  from  over-indulgence  in  them.  With  much 
money  he  acquires  appetites  and  wants;  and  the 
present-day  economist  tells  him  that  wants  are  the  in- 
centive to  exertion,  and  that  humanity  develops  prop- 
erly only  under  such  stress.  Every  day  there  is  renewed 
strain  for  more  money,  and  a  further  gratification  of 
new  appetites,  which,  like  morphine  or  liquor,  leave 
the  patient  worse  off  than  before.  With  all  our  wealth, 


146  THE  MONEY  GOD 

and  the  bulk  of  it  devoted  to  our  physical  and  material 
nature,  we  have  not  that  side  of  us  normally  or  prop- 
erly developed.  It  is  doubtful  if  we  have  ever  enjoyed 
our  over-indulgence.  Intemperance  is  its  own  Nemesis. 

But  what  about  our  mental  nature  ?  With  our  hun- 
dreds of  colleges  and  thousands  of  schools,  what  is  our 
intellectual  attainment  ?  We  are  said  to  be  quick  and 
"clever,"  with  an  answer  for  everything;  but  in  the 
last  twenty  years  of  our  enormous  money-making,  what 
intellectual  thing  of  world-importance  have  we  done? 
Another  Sydney  Smith  might  ask  us:  What  poets  or 
philosophers  or  essayists  or  critics  have  you  produced  ? 
What  novels  or  sculpture  or  pictures  or  music  of  yours 
have  convulsed  the  world  ?  What  new  principles  have 
your  physicians  and  surgeons  discovered,  or  your  law- 
yers and  preachers  established  ?  Who  are  your  leaders 
in  pure  science,  in  pure  politics,  in  history,  theology, 
ethics  ? 

To  this  we  might  make  answer  with  a  list  of  dis- 
tinguished names  known  here,  if  not  in  every  case 
elsewhere.  Such  studies  and  callings  are  pursued  in 
America,  and  there  are  excellent  students  in  the  dif- 
ferent branches;  but  how  much  better  and  greater 
they  might  have  been  had  there  been  any  popular  en- 
couragement or  even  demand  for  their  work!  They 
have  fought  against  the  overpowering  materialism  of 
the  land,  like  a  swimmer  against  the  tide,  until,  finally 
worn  out,  many  of  them  drift  with  it,  and  eventually 
will  be  engulfed  by  it.  The  wonder  is  perhaps  not  that 


THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  MONEY  147 

they  have  done  so  little,  but  that  in  such  an  environment 
they  could  do  anything  at  all.  The  present  surroundings 
are  not  well  fitted  for  them.  But  if  our  supposititious 
Sydney  Smith  should  ask  who  are  our  great  men  in 
mechanics,  commerce,  transportation,  manufactures, 
finance,  we  should  have  no  trouble  in  reciting  dozens 
of  names,  well  known  in  every  country  of  the  globe. 
Our  captains  of  industry,  our  money-making  inventors, 
our  practical  scientists  need  no  introduction  either  at 
home  or  abroad.  It  is  our  great  achievement,  for 
which  Europe  and  Asia  give  us  due  credit,  that  we 
lead  the  world  in  all  money-making  devices.  We  have 
no  difficulty  in  holding  our  own  with  anything  that  min- 
isters directly  or  indirectly  to  material  wants. 

And  what  about  that  moral  phase  of  us  which  seems 
at  times  to  be  suffering  eclipse?  Oh,  to  be  sure,  we 
have  our  hundreds  of  thousands  who  observe  the  Ten 
Commandments,  go  to  church  every  Sunday,  and  do 
not  cheat  their  neighbors  on  week  days,  just  as  we  have 
our  tens  of  thousands  who  read  good  books  and  do  some 
high  thinking  outside  of  their  business  or  profession; 
but  is  not  their  morality,  like  their  religion,  a  matter  of 
tradition,  and  their  intellectuality  an  inherited  habit? 
Are  we,  in  any  large  sense,  a  nation  just  now  devoted 
to  teaching  and  cultivating  either  the  moral,  the  spirit- 
ual, or  the  intellectual  ?  It  is  useless  to  cite  individual 
instances  regarding  so  abstract  a  contention.  A  thou- 
sand cases  of  moral  development  on  one  side  might  be 
met  by  a  thousand  cases  of  immoral  development  on 


148  THE  MONEY  GOD 

the  other  side.  And,  after  all,  legally,  the  character  of 
a  man  (or  of  a  people)  is  established  by  his  general 
reputation  among  his  fellow-men.  It  seems  very  cer- 
tain that  our  reputation  morally  and  intellectually  is 
not  so  widely  established  as  our  reputation  materially 
and  commercially.  We  are  over-developed  as  mer- 
chants, traders,  carriers,  manufacturers;  and  though 
we  are  not  by  any  means  devoid  of  the  moral  or  the 
intellectual,  yet  these  things  are  in  abeyance,  are  kept 
subservient  to  the  physical. 

Just  now  the  gratification  of  the  senses  seems  upper- 
most, and  this  is  reflected  in  our  present  civilization. 
Ours  is  a  material  growth,  and,  like  most  things  ma- 
terial, it  will  not  last  forever.  We  shall  perhaps  rise 
out  of  it  because,  sooner  or  later,  we  shall  come  to 
realize  that  the  indulgence  of  wants  does  not  satisfy, 
that  a  few  things  are  better  than  many,  that  money  can- 
not buy  happiness,  and  that  the  mind  and  the  heart  are 
more  abiding  sources  of  pleasure  than  the  stomach. 

Even  now,  perhaps,  a  change  is  coming,  for  with  all 
our  wealth  there  is  discontent.  It  is  among  all  classes 
— the  day  laborer,  the  mechanic,  the  salaried  man,  the 
manager,  the  mill-owner — even  the  millionaire  knows 
it.  Indeed,  the  discontent  of  the  poor  is  not  so  appall- 
ing as  that  of  the  rich.  With  apparently  every  wish 
gratified  they  are  still  unhappy. 

Somewhere  out  of  half-forgotten  history  comes  the 
story  of  the  luxurious  king,  Abu-Abdallah,  tossing  un- 
easily upon  a  splendid  couch,  and  groaning  in  spirit  as 


THE   STRUGGLE   FOU  MONEY  149 

his  Vizier  asked  him  what  thing  he  could  bring  to  give 

him  pleasure. 

"Oh,  Vizier!  I  am  cursed  for  a  want!"  exclaimed 
the  unhappy  one. 

And  the  story  continues  that  the  perplexed  Vizier 
wrung  his  hands  in  despair  as  he  gave  back  answer: 
"By  the  beard  of  the  Prophet,  O  King,  thy  case  is 
a  hard  one!" 


CHAPTER  XII 
DISCONTENT 

IT  is  proper  to  say,  apropos  of  our  last  chapter,  that 
those  who  seek  wealth  for  the  power  it  will  give  them  do 
not  form  the  great  majority.  In  fact,  there  are  very  few 
who  start  out  with  that  ambition,  though  quite  a  number 
acquire  the  liking  for  control  or  command  after  they 
get  started.  Nor  are  there  many  who  pursue  wealth 
just  for  wealth's  sake.  Some  continue  at  money-mak- 
ing into  old  age,  but  it  is  because  they  are  fond  of  the 
excitement  of  it,  or  the  business  itself,  or  their  partners 
and  associates,  or  because  they  have  been  in  harness  so 
long  that  they  would  feel  ill  at  ease  out  of  it.  These  are, 
however,  but  a  handful  to  the  millions  of  money-makers 
who  are  after  pleasure  rather  than  power.  The  average 
young  man  in  trade  or  commerce  or  mining  or  agri- 
culture, in  the  country  store,  the  city  bank,  the  railway 
office,  or  the  machine  shop,  cares  little  about  the  political 
or  commercial  lever  that  money  will  put  in  his  hands. 
He  wishes  to  gain  wealth  so  that  he  need  no  longer 
work,  that  he  may  "take  it  easy,"  and  "have  a  good 
time." 

This  is  the  common  ambition,  and  also  the  common 
150 


DISCONTENT  151 

disappointment.  For  to  be  able  to  get  on  without  work 
is  not  a  blessing,  but  a  misfortune.  It  is  the  dream  of 
certain  Utopian  economists  and,  naturally  enough,  the 
prayer  of  those  who  are  overworked;  but  human  ex- 
perience is  on  record  against  general  idleness  in  too 
positive  a  manner  for  contravention.  One  need  instance 
just  two  classes  in  present-day  society  to  suggest  the 
misery  of  "no  work" — the  idle  rich  and  the  idle  poor. 
It  is  a  question  which  is  the  more  miserable,  but  there 
is  no  question  that  both  are  unhappy.  Even  the  con- 
victs in  prison  beg  to  be  given  labor,  something  to  do. 
As  for  "having  a  good  time" — which  usually  means 
the  indulgence  of  the  appetites — that  is  a  still  com- 
moner disappointment.  There  is  always  a  next  morn- 
ing when  the  piper  has  to  be  paid  in  more  ways  than 
are  dreamt  of  in  a  social  science.  Over-eating  and 
excessive  drinking  eventually  put  one  on  a  milk  diet,  too 
much  society  wrecks  the  nerves,  too  much  excitement 
leads  up  to  heart  disease  or  apoplexy.  Other  desires 
soon  become  dulled  by  gratification.  A  new  game  or  a 
new  plaything  is  all  the  rage  this  year,  but  next  year  it 
will  have  passed  on.  Dances  and  theatres  are  on  a 
footing  in  this  respect  with  bicycles,  horses,  autos, 
yachts.  To  be  able  to  have  them  is  soon  not  to  want 
them.  At  the  opera  the  people  in  the  gallery  look 
down  at  those  in  the  boxes,  and  think  what  "a  lovely 
time"  the  box  occupants  are  having.  But  no!  Half 
the  people  in  the  boxes  are  bored  almost  to  extinction. 
They  are  there  more  because  it  is  the  correct  thing  to 


152  THE  MONEY  GOD 

do  rather  than  because  they  are  lovers  of  music.  They 
are  not  really  enjoying  it.  Just  so  with  those  who 
occupy  palatial  houses,  entertain  grandly,  and  are  duly 
reported,  with  portrait  accompaniments,  in  the  society 
papers.  They  put  forth  a  bold  front  about  it,  but  in 
reality  the  splendor  soon  becomes  tawdry;  they  begin 
to  know  the  dreariness  and  emptiness  of  formality; 
they  are  having  what  is  called  "a  good  time,"  yet  they 
remember  having  had  much  better  ones  when  they  were 
younger,  poorer,  and  less  important  socially. 

But  the  rising  generation  will  not  believe  this.  It 
can  no  more  be  taught  by  precept  than  its  predecessor. 
It  must  run  its  head  against  the  stone  wall  to  find  out 
that  a  wall  is  there.  It  is  quite  willing  to  risk  splendid 
misery.  So  each  year  sees  new  recruits.  They  hail 
from  everywhere  or  nowhere;  they  may  belong  in  New 
York  or  they  may  drift  into  the  city  from  beyond  the 
Alleghanies.  The  Western  man  who  has  made  a  fort- 
une, and  comes  East  with  his  family  to  spend  it,  is 
perhaps  the  more  typical.  With  abundant  means  there 
is  no  reason  why  he  and  his  family  should  not  adopt 
that  "higher  standard  of  living"  which  writers  of  the 
present  day  assure  us  is  a  nearer  approach  to  perfect 
existence.  This  means  for  them  a  larger  house,  more 
varied  food  and  drink,  more  magnificent  raiment,  and 
more  display.  There  goes  with  these,  of  course,  all  the 
accompaniments  of  a  grand  establishment — servants, 
horses,  dinners,  balls,  opera  parties.  For,  naturally, 
the  breaking  into  society  is  a  primary  aim  of  the  new- 


DISCONTENT  153 

ly-arrived.  The  ambition  to  "better  one's  social  posi- 
tion "  is  a  rampant  American  institution.  Almost  every 
one  is  plagued  with  it. 

Perhaps  the  parents  are  not  so  eager  about  the  new 
life  as  the  children.  They  have  rural  tastes  that  pos- 
sibly hark  back  to  the  church  sociable  or  the  Saturday 
night  gathering  about  the  stove  in  the  country  store. 
They  may  be  dazzled  momentarily  by  their  splendid 
estate,  but  sooner  or  later  they  realize  that  most  of  it  is 
gilded  dust.  Still,  the  wish  to  "give  the  children  a 
chance,"  to  place  them  higher  in  the  social  scale  than 
they  themselves  attained,  is  uppermost;  and  they  smile 
and  bear  all  sorts  of  snubs,  indignities,  and  impositions 
for  the  sake  of  the  new  generation. 

If  the  parents  have  small  capacity  for  the  frivolous 
entertainments  of  smart  society,  their  children  soon 
prove  to  have  little  capacity  for  anything  else.  The 
young  man  fails  to  graduate  at  college,  the  young 
woman  prefers  "coming  out"  at  eighteen  to  attending 
school.  Their  newly-made  friends  in  society  console 
them  with  corresponding  experiences.  Society  is  the 
thing  after  all,  and  academic  learning  is  merely  a 
musty  tradition  carried  on  by  the  "grinds."  And 
money  is  the  only  possession  that  really  counts.  In 
order  to  come  into  the  becoming  notice  of  the  exclusive 
social  leaders,  there  is  heavy  plunging  in  extravagances 
— costly  dinners  at  fashionable  restaurants  in  gondo- 
las or  on  horseback,  horse-show  appearances  in  a  welter 
of  ball  dresses  and  jewels,  yachting  parties  remarkable 


154  THE  MONEY  GOD 

for  the  floating  of  everything  in  champagne,  alms-giving 
with  that  recklessness  that  ruins  the  receivers,  and 
church-giving  with  that  prodigality  that  makes  the 
plain  people  of  the  congregation  seem  penurious. 

The  extravagances  and  display  of  the  newly-arrived 
get  them  into  the  social  columns  of  the  newspapers, 
and  finally  land  them  within  the  sacred  enclosure  of 
smart  society.  To  be  sure,  they  are  winked  and 
laughed  over,  and  behind  their  backs  are  ridiculed; 
but  society  eats  their  dinners,  drinks  their  wines,  goes 
to  their  big  country  places,  and  sometimes  apologetic- 
ally insists  that  they  are  "not  half  bad."  In  the  mean- 
tune  the  eternal  round  of  teas,  bridge,  opera  and 
theatre  parties  goes  on  by  winter;  and  autoing,  yacht- 
ing, riding,  and  polo  by  summer.  The  desire  to  do 
ultra  things  increases  because  the  moderate  things  soon 
fail  to  excite  or  stimulate.  There  is  over-dressing, 
over-eating,  over-entertaining,  the  cultivation  of  smarter 
companions,  more  risque  conversation,  more  bizarre 
conduct.  Finally,  all  the  sugar  having  been  eaten  off 
the  cake,  there  is  the  beginning  of  satiety.  The  meeting 
of  the  same  people  and  the  enduring  of  the  same  talk 
about  the  same  subjects  come  to  be  a  nuisance.  There 
is  a  growing  tyranny  of  things,  and 

"  The  endless  clatter  of  plate  and  knife, 
*    *    the  singular  mess  we  agree  to  call  life," 

begins  to  shape  itself  in  dull  monotonous  proportions. 
To  get  rid  of  ennui,  to  stop  the  thoughts  that  frighten 


DISCONTENT  155 

them  when  alone,  there  is  a  still  further  plunge  into 
dissipation.  The  young  woman  goes  out  much,  sleeps 
little,  gambles  largely,  perhaps  smokes  inordinately; 
while  the  young  man  drowns  carking  care  in  multi- 
tudinous club  cocktails.  Presently  there  is  a  physical 
break-down,  with  neurasthenia  as  the  nominal  trouble; 
or  a  social  scandal  to  make  food  for  the  newspapers, 
such  as  the  young  lady's  running  off  with  the  chauffeur 
in  lieu  of  the  coachman,  or  the  young  gentleman's 
putting  a  bullet  through  his  head  from  sheer  world- 
weariness. 

It  is  such  lives  as  these  that  look  upon  the  surface 
to  be  all  sunshine.  When  they  end  abruptly  in  gloom, 
with  divorce,  suicide,  or  some  equally  desperate  plunge 
to  get  out  of  the  mesh,  people  stare  open-eyed  and 
cannot  understand  why  So-and-So,  "with  everything  to 
live  for,"  should  do  such  a  thing.  But  many  there  are 
who  go  this  way,  and  others  there  be  of  duller,  less 
hysterical  natures,  with  "hearts  as  dry  as  summer's 
dust,"  that  wearily  live  on  into  old  age,  burning  to  the 
socket  at  some  club  window  or  in  some  opera  box. 

But  it  would  be  a  misapprehension  to  suppose  that 
all  the  wealthy  go  through  this  miserable  experience. 
It  is  only  a  part  of  the  smart,  flashy  element,  so  much 
admired,  that  is  thus  in  evidence — considerable  in 
numbers  in  every  town  in  the  country,  to  be  sure,  but 
still  in  the  minority.  Most  of  the  millionaires  are 
shrewd,  sensible  people,  or  they  would  not  be  mil- 
lionaires; and  they  know  that  money  will  not  buy  every- 


156  THE  MONEY  GOD 

thing.  They  use  it  perhaps  seriously  and  sensibly  in 
the  cultivation  of  tastes  for  art,  music,  books,  travel; 
they  take  an  interest  in  politics,  in  municipal  improve- 
ments, sociological  problems,  educational  matters;  or 
perhaps  they  continue  in  business  and  help  along  the 
proper  development  of  the  country.  In  any  event, 
their  personal  expenditure  is  small.  They  do  not  live 
extravagantly,  they  have  few  of  "the  good  times"  so 
coveted  by  the  would-bes;  and  as  for  dissipation,  it  is 
not  a  word  in  their  vocabulary.  The  very  rich,  like 
the  Rockefellers  and  the  Carnegies,  are  remarkable  for 
their  abstemiousness,  the  simplicity  of  their  lives,  in 
spite  of  "castles"  and  country  houses  made  supra- 
magnificent  by  the  imagination  of  newspaper  reporters. 
But  even  with  the  sensible  use  of  money  there  is, 
with  the  wealthy  themselves,  the  realization  that  it  is 
not  the  source  of  abiding  happiness.  The  real  joys  of 
life  are  in  simple  things — home,  family,  friends,  books, 
nature,  none  of  them  an  expensive  or  unattainable  taste. 
The  millionaire  is  never  so  happy  as  when  he  has  closed 
his  Fifth  Avenue  "palace,"  and  is  away  in  the  woods 
fishing,  living  out  of  a  frying-pan,  and  sleeping  in  a 
lean-to  under  the  pines  with  his  coat  for  a  pillow.  It 
is  a  satisfaction  to  throw  off  cares  and  worries,  to  fling 
the  world  behind  one,  to  be  free,  to  be  let  alone.  The 
very  power  of  wealth  turns  out  finally  to  be  something 
of  a  nuisance,  something  of  a  disappointment,  some- 
thing which  is  no  longer  desirable.  Like  the  blue- 
winged  butterfly  of  Cashmere, 


DISCONTENT  157 

"The  lovely  toy  so  fiercely  sought 
Hath  lost  its  charm  by  being  caught." 

Possession  kills  desire.  To  have  a  thing  is  no  longer 
to  want  it.  Prince  Bismarck  at  the  height  of  his  power 
made  the  statement  that  his  greatest  pleasure  was  to 
be  up  in  the  mountains,  wearing  greased  boots,  and 
alone  with  his  dogs.  There  have  been  other  heads 
that  have  rested  uneasily  under  the  weight  of  the  crown. 
Many  kings  in  history  have  gladly  abdicated;  and  in 
our  own  day  we  have  seen  our  richest  men  giving  away 
their  hundreds  of  millions.  Evidently  happiness  is  not 
synonymous  with  a  bank  account,  is  not  the  outcome 
of  power,  and  has  little  to  do  with  luxuries. 

But  again,  those  who  are  without  wealth  will  not 
believe  this.  They  cannot  understand  why  a  man 
with  plenty  of  money  should  be  dissatisfied;  and  that 
such  a  person  should  commit  suicide  through  sheer 
boredom  is  proof -positive  of  inherited  insanity.  Give 
them  the  chance  and  the  money,  and  never  doubt  but 
that  they  would  be  happy!  The  supersensitive  who 
shoot  themselves  do  not  know  how  to  have  "a  good 
time" !  Let  the  "outs"  get  in,  and  they  will  set  a  pat- 
tern for  future  millionaires !  It  is  an  old  story.  Every 
worm  in  the  bait  box  wants  a  change,  wants  to  "im- 
prove his  condition  in  life"  by  getting  somewhere  eke. 
Not  that  the  uneasy  "outs"  suffer  for  the  necessaries 
of  existence,  with  no  place  to  sleep  and  little  to  eat; 
not  that  they  are  lame,  blind,  halt,  or  have  other  mis- 


158  THE  MONEY  GOD 

fortunes;  but  they  are  unhappy  because  others  have 
more  than  they,  and  indulge  in  a  "higher  standard  of 
living."  Discontent  is  with  the  rich  man  because  of 
having  too  much,  and  with  the  poor  man  because  he 
has  too  little.  Is  there  any  happy  man  in  between  ? 

It  is  a  somewhat  hackneyed  saying  that  those  who 
have  neither  poverty  nor  riches — the  middle  class  in 
the  community — are  the  happiest  people  of  all.  That 
may  be  generally  true;  but  specifically,  what  about  the 
mechanic  class  of  to-day  as  represented  by  our  labor 
unionists?  They  are  certainly  neither  rich  nor  poor, 
but  have  about  as  much  discontent  under  their  hats 
as  any  class  of  people  to  be  found  between  Maine 
and  California.  Their  wages  have  been  steadily  in- 
creasing for  ten  years  until  now  they  appear  very  large, 
but  their  discontent  has  increased  in  corresponding 
proportions.  They  have  more  to-day  than  yesterday, 
but  still  not  enough.  They  are  dissatisfied  with  their 
income,  their  work,  their  employer,  their  government — 
their  whole  condition  and  position  in  life.  Why? 
What  part  has  the  spirit  of  envy  in  this  discontent  ? 

The  question  is  one  that  cannot  be  answered  by 
statistics,  nor  argued  arbitrarily  from  experience;  and 
yet  everyone  knows  that  envy  is  a  more  common  breeder 
of  unhappiness  than  want.  We  are  all  of  us  perhaps 
disposed  to  think  that  some  one  else  is  getting  more  hap- 
piness out  of  life  than  we  are;  and  every  man,  sooner 
or  later,  thinks  his  own  career  a  mistake,  and  wishes 
he  could  change  places  with  his  neighbor.  Experience, 


DISCONTENT  159 

however,  has  failed  to  prove  the  increased  happiness 
of  the  change.  As  for  Labor,  the  more  it  gets  the 
more  it  wants.  In  that  respect  it  is  not  different  from 
Capital.  It  is  continually  quarrelling  about  the  dollar, 
and  apparently  not  interested  in  anything  but  the 
dollar.  No  wonder  it  is  discontented. 

But  the  saying  about  the  middle  class  in  the  com- 
munity being  the  happiest,  refers  perhaps  more  strictly 
to  the  professional  classes  than  to  the  labor  class — to 
the  teachers,  preachers,  physicians,  lawyers,  engineers, 
managers,  and  others  who  live  on  a  stipend.  True 
enough,  this  class  is  about  the  most  contented  of  all. 
It  does  not  get  much  money,  and  between  the  exactions 
of  Capital  and  Labor  it  has  hard  enough  work  to  make 
a  living  and  educate  its  children;  but  for  thirty  years 
it  has  upheld  a  tariff  that  oppressed  them,  hoping 
thereby  to  benefit  a  manufacturing  class  that  ignored 
them  and  a  laboring  class  that  despised  them,  and  has 
uttered  little  or  no  complaint.  To-day  it  is  compara- 
tively worse  off  as  regards  money  than  any  other  class, 
having  had  little  or  no  increase  of  wage  from  the  recent 
prosperity  of  the  country;  but  amid  the  almost  universal 
clamor  of  the  envious  and  discontented  it  has  held  its 
tongue  about  its  poverty,  and  gone  its  way  in  peace. 

It  has  not  held  its  tongue,  however,  about  the 
wrangling  and  quarrelling  of  Capital  and  Labor,  the 
lawlessness  and  recklessness  of  rich  and  poor  alike,  the 
slashing  to  pieces  of  the  country,  and  the  mental  and 
moral  downslip  of  the  nation.  Nor  will  it  cease  to  talk 


160  THE  MONEY  GOD 

about  these  things.  The  country  belongs  to  the  pro- 
fessional classes  as  much  as  to  the  promoters  and  their 
cohorts.  And,  in  the  end,  it  is  the  professional  classes 
who  are  held  responsible  for  the  well-being  of  the  re- 
public. It  is  the  intelligence  of  a  nation  that  ultimately 
rules,  not  the  business  men  who  buy  and  sell,  nor  the 
voters  who  are  run  into  polling  places  like  sheep,  and 
sold  by  the  bosses  at  so  much  a  head.  The  great 
trouble  with  the  professional  classes  is  that  they  do  not 
talk  enough.  They  should  resolutely  oppose  the 
present  tendency  toward  turning  the  country  into  a 
slot-machine,  and  the  people  of  it  into  a  mob  of  hys- 
terical gamblers.  With  the  fairest  land  in  the  world, 
and  the  greatest  opportunity  a  people  has  ever  known, 
we  shall  not  escape  condemnation  if  out  of  our  civili- 
zation comes  naught  but  money.  Humanity  has  the 
right  to  expect  better  things  of  us. 

But,  it  may  be  asked,  why  is  it  that  the  professional 
classes  are  the  most  contented  of  any  in  the  com- 
munity ?  They  have  small  incomes,  and  are  sometimes 
worried  by  debts  and  obligations;  but  why  is  it  that 
they  never  "strike"  or  form  combinations  in  restraint 
of  life,  liberty,  and  property  that  they  may  get  more 
money  ?  Is  it  perhaps  that  money  is  not  the  great  aim 
and  ideal  of  their  lives  ?  The  fact  that  they  take  up 
with  pursuits  which  are  known  to  yield  no  great  pecuniary 
returns  would  suggest  as  much.  They  enter  profes- 
sions because  they  are  interested  in  the  work.  For 
love  of  the  work  they  are  willing  to  forego  wealth.  As 


DISCONTENT  161 

a  result,  they  are  not  gnawed  by  envy,  nor  eaten  up 
with  discontent.  Possibly  they  were  of  a  contented 
disposition  originally  or  they  would  not  have  gone 
into  the  professions.  If  so,  it  but  helps  us  on  to  a 
further  conclusion,  whither  we  have  been  tending  for 
some  pages  back,  namely:  Contentment  is  a  subjective 
quality  and  exists  quite  independent  of  possessions.  It 
is  something  in  the  disposition  of  the  individual  and 
cannot  be  bought.  Money  has  very  little  to  do  with  it. 

But  the  economist  insists  that  content  is  not  the  proper 
state  of  mind;  that  discontent  stimulates  to  action, 
leads  up  to  great  deeds,  and  is  therefore  preferable.  In 
the  narrow  meaning  of  contentment  as  that  self-satis- 
faction which  allows  one  to  rest  upon  his  oars,  there  is 
undoubtedly  truth  in  the  economist's  insistence.  But, 
even  so,  why  should  all  action  gather  about  money, 
and  why  should  all  deeds  be  of  a  barter-and-sale  char- 
acter? A  little  dissatisfaction  over  the  emptiness  of 
the  American  head  might  produce  as  favorable  results 
as  dissatisfaction  over  the  supposed  emptiness  of  the 
American  pocket-book. 

And  why  may  not  one  continue  to  work  and  still  be 
happy  with  his  lot?  Contentment  does  not  argue  a 
condition  without  work,  but  a  mind  without  worry. 
With  it  one  may  still  wish  to  "better  his  position  in 
life,"  but  not  necessarily  by  an  accumulation  of  wealth. 
To  have  that  "good  time,"  to  be  overfed  and  over- 
dressed and  over-indulged,  to  cut  a  figure  in  rapid, 
foolish  society  is  not  to  "better"  one's  position.  Such 


162  THE  MONEY  GOD 

things  are  designed  to  entertain,  to  amuse,  to  furnish 
some  sort  of  physical  pleasure;  but  the  mental  and  the 
moral  natures  require  as  much  attention  as  the  physical 
if  the  greatest  betterment  is  to  be  reached.  Money  is 
perhaps  capable  of  helping  all  three,  but,  unfortunately, 
the  use  to  which  it  is  put  makes  it  more  often  harm- 
ful to  all  three.  True  enough,  it  unlocks  many  doors, 
and  some  that  might  better  never  have  been  opened, 
but  it  never  yet  opened  the  door  of  human  happiness. 
Those  who  expect  to  get  money  first,  and  ask  the 
Happy  Fairy  to  come  live  with  them  afterward,  will  be 
disappointed  of  their  guest.  She  will  not  come. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
CONCLUSION 

THIS  is  the  portion  of  a  book  wherein  the  reader 
usually  expects  to  find  a  list  of  remedies  for  our  ills,  a 
catalogue  of  laws  recommended,  or,  at  least,  a  bit  of 
good  advice  in  parting.  And  this  is  the  time  when  he 
will  perhaps  be  agreeably  disappointed.  I  have  no 
faith  to  believe  that  we  shall  change  our  conditions  by 
legislation;  nor  have  I  any  theory  wherewith  we  may 
produce  a  national  happiness  or  plan  whereby  we  may 
reform  the  nature  of  man.  This  is  not  a  book  of  con- 
structive criticism.  I  shall  be  satisfied  if  I  have  pointed 
out  where  we  lack,  where  we  ail,  and  more  than  satis- 
fied if  that  will  make  people  think.  We  require  no 
precipitate  action,  but  rather  a  sober  realization  of  our 
present  condition. 

Unfortunately,  precipitate  action  in  advance  of  think- 
ing is  our  usual  method  of  procedure.  If  anything 
goes  wrong  with  the  individual  or  the  city  or  the  state, 
if  the  unexpected  happens  in  business,  or  the  unfore- 
seen comes  to  pass  in  politics,  immediately  there  is  the 
clamor  of  press  and  public  for  legislation,  for  action, 
for  judgment.  In  hard  times  we  cry  out  for  a  new 
163 


164  THE  MONEY  GOD 

tariff  or  a  wider  circulation  of  the  currency;  in  good 
times  we  insist  upon  federal  statutes  that  may  be  used 
to  "bust"  the  trusts,  and  state  statutes  that  shall  bully 
the  railways.  We  do  not  inquire  whose  or  what  the 
fault,  nor  wait  to  see  if  the  fault  will  correct  itself;  we 
demand  a  law  that  shall  meet  the  requirement  of  the 
moment.  As  a  result,  the  statute  books  are  burdened 
with  hundreds  of  laws  originally  designed  to  meet 
special  needs,  but  now  (the  needs  having  passed)  are 
as  dead  as  the  code  of  Draco. 

In  this  making  of  laws,  be  it  understood  that  every 
individual  who  finds  himself  clothed  with  a  little  brief 
authority  as  a  legislator,  takes  himself  seriously  as  an 
expert.  That  is  why  he  has  such  a  profound  contempt 
for  other  people's  opinions.  The  newly-elected  senator 
from  Kansas,  who  has  spent  his  days  on  a  farm,  no 
sooner  arrives  in  Washington  than  he  develops  a  very 
superior  knowledge  of  constitutional  law;  the  governors 
of  southern  states,  who  have  been  on  the  wrong  side 
of  every  financial  fence  since  the  Civil  War,  dictate  a 
rate  schedule  to  interstate  railways;  and  defeated 
Presidential  candidates,  who  have  never  had  any  large 
experience  in  money  matters,  pop  up  with  schemes  for 
checking  the  hoarding  of  money  in  times  of  panic  by 
having  the  general  government  guarantee  the  deposits 
in  all  the  national  banks.  Ridiculous  as  such  assump- 
tions may  appear  on  their  face,  the  law-making  part  of 
them  becomes  a  reality  too  often  for  laughter.  But  the 
laws  do  not  command  respect,  every  one  ignores  them 


CONCLUSION  165 

if  he  can,  and  our  contempt  for  authority  is  increased 
thereby. 

The  reputation  we  have  achieved  as  the  most  lawless 
people  on  the  face  of  the  earth  is  perhaps  too  well 
established  to  be  refuted.  The  cause  of  it  is  not  far 
to  seek.  We  have  too  many  foolish  laws  for  any  intel- 
ligent people  to  live  up  to.  The  great  evil  of  most  of 
them  is  that  they  are  designed  to  help  or  harm  certain 
individuals,  corporate  bodies,  classes,  or  communities. 
They  are  special,  not  general  laws.  If  laws  have  any 
meaning  whatever,  it  is  to  enforce  uniform  conditions 
for  all  alike,  and  not  to  supply  opportunities  or  estab- 
lish hindrances  to  the  few.  Every  one  should  be  placed 
upon  an  equal  footing  and  then  allowed  to  work  out 
his  own  salvation.  That  is  the  essence  of  individual 
liberty,  and  so  long  as  individualism  and  not  paternal- 
ism is  the  policy  of  our  government,  there  should  be  no 
pro  or  con  discriminations  by  special  statutes.  Every 
one  understands  that  individual  action  must  not  con- 
flict with  general  interests,  and  that  at  times  it  may  be 
necessary  to  curb  the  specially  bumptious;  but  among 
the  sober-minded  there  is  a  feeling  that  there  are  too 
many  petty  enactments,  too  many  unnecessary  restric- 
tions. They  would  have  many  of  them  repealed  and 
the  remaining  general  laws  more  rigorously  enforced. 

Of  course,  almost  every  one  in  the  community  has 
remedial  legislation  in  mind  for  what  are  esteemed  un- 
bearable grievances.  There  are  those  who  would  re- 
peal the  Protective  Tariff  and  Contract-Labor  laws, 


166  THE  MONEY  GOD 

who  would  insist  upon  the  incorporation  of  Labor,  the 
enforcement  of  the  Eight-Hour  day,  the  restriction  of 
the  voting  franchise,  the  stopping  of  immigration,  the 
abolition  of  the  tenement-house  conditions.  There  are 
others  who  would  be  delighted  with  laws  to  control 
corporations,  to  regulate  railways,  to  abolish  the  writ 
of  injunction,  to  stop  federal  interference  in  state 
affairs  and  labor  matters,  to  expand  the  currency,  to 
tax  legacies  and  incomes,  to  limit  fortunes,  to  investigate 
millionaires;  in  short,  to  exploit  almost  any  one's  iniqui- 
ty, save  their  own.  Possibly  some  of  these  recommenda- 
tions might  be  of  value  in  adjusting  the  yoke  and  dis- 
tributing the  load  more  evenly,  but  they  would  not  be 
reliefs  from  the  burden.  Nor  would  they  be  recipes 
for  happiness  in  the  home,  peace  in  the  town,  and  up- 
rightness in  the  nation.  We  cannot  by  rushing  a  bill 
through  Congress  resolve  ourselves  into  either  a  pros- 
perous or  a  contented  people.  Wealth  and  happiness 
at  such  a  price  would  be  too  easy  of  attainment.  The 
welfare  of  a  nation  rests  not  in  its  legislative  halls,  but 
in  the  moral  sense  of  its  people.  History  in  the  past 
has  proved  this  again  and  again.  All  the  laws  of  Rome 
— the  greatest  law-maker  among  the  nations — could  not 
save  her  from  destruction  when  once  her  morality 
began  to  fail.  One  wonders  at  times  if  the  somewhat 
desperate  and  frequent  recourse  to  legislation  in  America 
is  not  indicative  of  where  our  own  moral  sense  is  slip- 
ping away. 
As  with  the  nation  so  with  the  individual.  His 


CONCLUSION  167 

salvation  lies  within  himself.  Intoning  the  virtues  in 
his  ear  or  flinging  moral  precepts  at  his  head  will  not 
help  him.  Nor  will  deterrent  laws  have  any  more 
than  a  negative  effect  upon  him.  We  may  legislate  to 
stamp  out  vice,  but  what  law  can  be  created  that  shall 
bring  in  virtue?  We  may  enact  "In  God  We  Trust" 
upon  our  coinage,  but  how  shall  we  make  the  individual 
trust  in  God?  He  must  learn  out  of  his  own  ex- 
perience that  the  mental  and  the  moral  are  as 
necessary  to  his  well-being  as  the  material  and  the 
physical. 

Again,  he  must  learn  over  again  a  forgotten  lesson 
of  the  ages — that  virtue  is  its  own  reward,  even  in  the 
worst  of  tunes.  At  present  he  perhaps  has  some  doubts 
about  it.  He  too  often,  for  instance,  despises  work  and 
endures  it  only  for  the  sake  of  its  money  equivalent; 
he  cannot  be  made  to  believe  in  the  gospel  of  work  for 
the  work's  sake;  and  he  does  not  comprehend  the  real 
happiness  that  comes  with  love — the  love  of  family, 
friends,  books,  nature,  art.  Just  now  he  is  too  much 
absorbed  in  money-getting  for  married  life  or  friend- 
ships; he  cares  little  or  nothing  about  reading  or 
music,  and  as  for  nature — the  most  abiding  of  all 
loves — he  has  perhaps  spent  his  business  energy  in 
disfiguring  her,  and  has  now  fled  to  the  city  where  he 
shall  not  see  her. 

There  are  plenty  of  other  things  of  good  report,  of 
interest,  of  charm,  that  men  in  the  past  have  thought 
lovable  and  pleasure-giving — things,  for  instance,  of 


168  THE  MONEY  GOD 

intellectual  pith  in  discovery,  in  science,  in  philosophy, 
in  political  creed,  even  in  religious  faiths  and  beliefs — 
but  there  is  small  reason  to  think  that  the  average 
American  of  to-day  cares  for  them.  He  has  no  time. 
When  his  ship  comes  in  with  its  cargo  of  specie  he  will 
cultivate  the  graces  and  amenities  of  life,  and  do  what 
he  can  for  art,  literature,  and  the  public  welfare.  But, 
alas,  poor  soul!  he  too  often  dies  in  the  harness,  with 
all  his  wealth  upon  him,  and  the  pale  vision  of  a  desired 
higher  life  unrealized.  Will  his  children  profit  by  his 
example?  Will  there  be  a  mental  and  a  moral  uplift 
with  the  generations  to  come  ?  Shall  we  finally  under- 
stand that  the  pursuit  of  wealth  does  not  lead  to  con- 
tentment, and  that  we  must  establish  loftier  ideals  of 
life? 

The  face  of  the  shield  just  now  shows  dark,  and  it 
is  this  darker  side  that  has  been  persistently  held  up  to 
view  throughout  these  chapters,  with  the  thought  that  it 
would  make  people  realize  the  clouds  that  lower  upon 
us;  but  it  would  be  idle  to  deny,  even  were  one  so  dis- 
posed, that  the  shield  has  another  and  a  brighter  re- 
flection. Let  us  not  doubt  that  there  is  still  happiness 
in  this  land  of  ours,  notwithstanding  the  hurly-burly  of 
these  commercial  days;  that  there  are  still  men  of 
honesty,  decency  and  righteousness  among  us;  and 
that  no  matter  how  sordid  the  motives  nor  how  vain 
the  pursuits  nor  how  threatening  the  outlook,  we  are 
by  no  means  to  be  despaired  of.  It  cannot  be  that  we 
shall  come  to  naught.  The  very  energy  of  the  Western 


CONCLUSION  169 

sun  in  us  should  save  us  from  destruction.  The  ideals 
of  the  fathers,  their  ambition  for  the  nation,  their 
prayers  that  ours  should  be  a  noble  life  and  ours  an 
influence  for  good  among  the  races  of  men,  are  still 
alive.  Deep  down  below  the  money  line  in  the  Amer- 
ican bosom  the  heart  is  sound;  and  it  is  not  an  un- 
reasonable hope  that  when  this  money  madness  has 
spent  its  fury  we  shall  return  to  the  American  tradi- 
tions, to  the  law  of  right  dealing  with  our  neighbor, 
and  to  the  gospel  of  love  and  faith.  Then,  perhaps,  we 
shall  be  prosperous  with  that  sum  of  prosperity  that 
lies  in  character  rather  than  in  wealth  or  girth,  and 
successful  with  that  measure  of  success  that  lies  in 
public  sentiment  rather  than  in  restraining  laws.  In 
the  meantime,  while  the  worship  of  the  Money  God 
continues,  perhaps  we  shall  talk  in  vain,  but  let  us 
not  cease  to  talk.  Whatever  our  defeat,  we  should 
continue  to  fight. 


BOOKS  BY  JOHN  C  VAN  DYKE 

Professor  of  the   History  of   Art    in    Rutgers    College 
PUBLISHED  BY  CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S    SONS 


The  Meaning  of 
Pictures 

With  31  full-page  illustrations,     xamo,  $1.15  net 


"It  may  be  questioned  if  any  other  book  of  its  scope 
has  ever  shown  'the  meaning  of  pictures'  in  a  way  that 
will  make  it  so  clear  to  the  average  English  reader." 

— The  Dial. 

"A  book  that  is  always  calm  and  cool  and  right.1' 
— New  York  Evening  Post. 

"Essentially  sound  and  rational." — Outlook. 

t(  We  could  ask  nothing  better  for  the  training  of  art 
taste  in  America  than  the  wide  circulation  and  careful 
reading  of  this  sound  and  sensible  introduction." 

—  The  Congregationalist. 

"  An  unusual  quality  in  art  criticism,  plain  common 
sense  with  a  delightful  avoidance  of  technical  jargon." 

— New  York  Sun. 

"  'The  Meaning  of  Pictures'  has  in  abundant  measure 
a  happy  kind  of  originality,  the  most  genuine  sort  of  help- 
fulness, and  rare  power  to  stimulate." — Boston  Herald. 


BY  PROFESSOR  JOHN  C.  VAN   DYKE 


Art  for  Art's  Sake 

Seven  University  Lectures  on  the 
Technical  Beauties  of  Painting 

With  24  reproductions  of  representative 
paintings.     i2mo,   $1.50 

*«  One  of  the  best  books  on  art  that  has  ever  been 
published  in  this  country." — Boston  Transcript. 

"We  consider  it  the  best  treatise  on  the  technic  of 
painting  for  general  readers." — The  Nation. 

"  Mr.  Van  Dyke  is  very  good  reading  indeed,  and 
withal  remarkably  clear  and  precise  in  explaining  much 
that  shapes  itself  but  hazily  in  the  brain  of  those  interested 
in  art." — London  Spectator. 

ft  I  do  not  know  that  there  is  a  book  in  English  from 
which  one  can  learn  more  of  what  pictures  are  and  why 
they  are  admired." — DR.  TALCOTT  WILLIAMS. 

*«  Has  all  the  recommendations  that  are  to  be  looked 
for  in  essays  of  the  kind.  They  take  a  broad  survey, 
they  deal  with  the  points  that  it  is  worth  while  to  know 
about,  they  are  perfectly  lucid,  and  they  are  very  charm- 
ing in  their  literary  art." — New  York  Sun. 

'•Temperate  and  appreciative." — Atlantic  Monthly. 

"Written  in  an  easy,  entertaining  style." 

— New  York  Tribune. 


BY  PROFESSOR  JOHN  C.  VAN  DYKE 


Nature  for  Its 
Own  Sake 

First  Studies  in  Natural  Appearances 

jarno,  $1.50 

"  No  one  can  read  it  without  having  his  knowledge 
of  nature  enlarged,  his  curiosity  quickened,  and  his  sen- 
sitiveness to  the  beauty  that  is  all  about  him  in  the  world 
increased  and  stimulated." — Chicago  Tribune. 

"  He  writes  clearly  and  simply  and  indulges  in  little 
rhetoric  or  false  sentiment.  His  'first  studies,'  therefore, 
will  probably  reveal  to  many  people  many  things  of 
which  they  were  unaware." — The  Nation. 

"A  series  of  interesting  and  distinctly  original  essays." 
— Philadelphia  Public  Ledger. 

"A  book  of  uncommon  merit,  first,  in  its  point  of 
view,  and,  second,  in  the  peculiar  skill  with  which  the 
subject  of  nature  is  handled." — Washington  Post. 

"A  book  on  nature  widely  different  from  anything 
yet  written,  and  fresh,  suggestive,  and  delightful." 

— New  York  Times. 

"A  book  for  all  nature  lovers.  ...  A  most 
delightful  vade  mtcum." 

— BLISS  CARMAN  in  New  York  Commercial  Advertiser. 


BY   PROFESSOR  JOHN  C.  VAN  DYKE 


The    Desert 

Further  Studies  in  Natural 
Appearances 

With  frontispiece.     lamo,  $1.25  net 

"The  reader  who  once  submits  to  its  spell  will  hardly 
lay  it  aside  until  the  last  page  is  turned." 

— The  Spectator  (London). 

"This  charming  volume  comes  as  strong  wine  indeed 
after  the  tepid  rose-water  of  books  dealing  with  snails  and 
daffodils  in  suburban  gardens.  Mr.  Van  Dyke  unques- 
tionably knows  his  desert;  he  has  the  true  wanderer's  eye 
for  its  essential  fascination." — The  Atben<eum  (London). 

"No  virgin  rush  of  young  impressions,  but  an  adult 
mingling  of  vision  and  criticism  in  a  style  that  engages 
without  startling  the  attention." — London  Academy. 

"Strange  and  curious  reading,  this  book  of  the  desert, 
and  has  all  the  fascination  of  things  unaccustomed." 

— New  York  Tribune. 

"The  writer's  personality  is  carefully  subordinated, 
but  one  cannot  help  feeling  it  strongly;  that  of  a  man 
more  sensitive  to  color  than  to  form,  enthusiastic,  but  with 
a  stern  hand  on  his  own  pulse." — Atlantic  Monthly. 


BY  PROFESSOR  JOHN  C.  VAN  DYKE 


The  Opal  Sea 

Continued  Studies  in  Impressions  and  Appearances 

With  Frontispiece.      12mo,  $1.25  net 

"Prof.  Van  Dyke  takes  his  reader's  imagination  cap- 
tive with  prose  in  which  we  feel  the  sea's  own  glamour 
of  beauty  and  movement  and  mystery,  its  glory  of  color 
and  power." — New  York  Tribune. 

"Pleasure  awaits  the  reader  of  'The  Opal  Sea.'" 
— Boston  Evening  Transcript. 

"The  history,  the  poetry,  the  science,  and  the  end- 
less aspects  of  the  sea  are  given  in  a  style  that  will  charm 
all  lovers  of  the  ocean." — The  Independent. 

"Will  be  read  for  the  pleasure  which  the  work  of  a 
skillful  observer  wielding  a  practised  pen  is  bound  to 
give;  and  the  pleasure  will  be  great.  Prof.  Van  Dyke 
is  a  master  of  the  art  of  'seascape'  who  need  fear  no 
comparison." — The  Spectator  (London). 

"No  English  writer,  and  no  other  writer  except 
Michelet,  has  done  as  much  as  Mr.  Van  Dyke  to  arrange 
attractively  what  has  been  in  the  course  of  ages  learned 
about  the  sea." — The  World  (London). 

"We  strongly  approve  the  combination  of  gifts  which 
represent  Prof.  Van  Dyke's  literary  equipment  and  wish 
to  commend  his  books  most  cordially  to  intelligent 
readers." — The  Standard  (London). 

"Lovers  of  the  sea  and  lovers  of  nature  generally  will 
find  much  to  interest  them  in  this  book,  and  here  and 
there  passages  that  may  enthrall  them." 

— Literary  World  (London). 

"Prof.  Van  Dyke's  being  at  heart  a  poet  of  the  sea 
is  proved  in  his  fine  raptures  on  well-nigh  everything  of 
the  deep." — Daily  Chronicle  (London). 


BY  PROFESSOR  JOHN  C.  VAN  DYKE 


Studies  in  Pictures 

An  Introduction  to  the 
Famous  Galleries 

With  40  Illustrations.     12mo,   $1.25  net 

"Professor  Van  Dyke  is  a  helpful  cicerone,  for  he 
does  not  overpower  the  reader  with  his  theories,  or  force 
upon  him  his  tastes,  or  crush  him  with  the  weight  of  his 
learning,  but  talks  clearly  and  sensibly  about  what  pic- 
tures are  painted  for  and  how  we  can  get  the  most  out 
of  them." — The  Independent. 

"It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  better  or  more  ac- 
complished guide  in  gaining  a  comprehension  of  the 
principles  of  appreciation  as  applied  to  painting." 

— The  Press  (Philadelphia). 

"Not  only  useful  to  the  unsophisticated,  to  whom  it 
is  admirably  adapted,  but  valuable  to  those  who  have  a 
tendency  to  lose  themselves  in  technicalities." 

— New  York  Times. 

"Mr  Van  Dyke  will  help  the  student  to  understand 
how  pictures  have  been  made  and  how  they  have  been 
brought  together  in  the  great  galleries ;  he  will  show  how 
to  get  at  the  points  of  view  held  by  the  masters,  and  how, 
in  short,  to  use  the  technique  of  art-study." 

— New  York  Tribune. 

"Much  useful  information  and  suggestive  thought 
in  an  informal  little  volume." — International  Studio. 

"Professor  Van  Dyke  writes  with  his  usual  cool 
good  sense." — New  York  Evening  Post. 

"An   admirable   introduction   to  travel  or   study." 
— The  Congregationalist. 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


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